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THE MASTERPIECES 

OF THE 

OHIO MOUND BUILDERS 



THE HILLTOP FORTIFICATIONS 

INCLUDING 

FORT ANCIENT 



BY E. O. RANDALL 

Secretary Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society 



COLUMBUS, OHIO 

PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY 
1908 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



THIS little volume makes no pretense of being a scientific 
or technical treatise on the Ohio Mound Builders or their 
works. Its aim is to briefly describe the chief relics of 
the Ohio Mound Builders as they now appear, and as they 
appeared when found in their original condition, or when first 
studied by archaeological students. Some twelve years ago the 
author became the Secretary of the Ohio State Archaeological and 
Historical Society. The duties of his office were confined to the 
executive affairs of the Society and the work of the Society along 
its historical lines. The archaeological department has been in the 
care of specialists in that subject. Professor G. Frederick Wright, 
Warren K. Moorehead, Gerard Fowke, Professor W. C. Mills and 
others connected with the Society have given their attention to the 
prehistoric researches and have produced many valuable publica- 
tions as the result of their investigations. The author of the pages 
herewith issued naturally came in contact with the work of these 
scholars and acquired an irresistible interest in the subject — a 
subject fraught with fascination because of its uniqueness and 
myster}^. The author has visited all the earthen works herein 
described — some of them many times — so that the descriptions are 
those of first hand, "views taken on the spot." This volume is 
confined to the Hilltop Fortifications. The author hopes at no 
distant day to supplement these studies with descriptions of the 
chief Lowland Enclosures, Mounds and Village sites. The so- 
called great religious relic of these lost people, known as Serpent 
Mound, has been minutely treated by the author in a volume 
recently published by the Society. 

E. O. Randall. 

February, 1908, 



CAHOKIA MOUND. 



During a sojourn in that fairyland of modern 
marvels, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, held at 
St. Louis, in the summer of 1904, it was the privilege 
of the writer in company with a part} 7 includ- 



ing several students of American Archaeology, to 
make an inspection of the world-famed Cahokia 
Mound. We crossed the sweeping Mississippi to the 
Illinois side, over the colossal bridge, one of the engi- 
neering achievements of modern invention and skill, 
which, had it existed in the ancient days of oriental 
glory, would have been regarded, if not the first, then 






Cahokia Mound as Originally Appearing. 



(1) 



2 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



easily the eighth wonder of the world. A half hour's 
ride on a swift speeding trolley car bore us inland 
some six miles, landing us almost at the base of 
the great mound — called respectively "Cahokia 
Mound/' from the Indian tribe which formerly inhab- 
ited the locality, and the "Monks' Mound/' from the 
fact that in the year 1810 a colony of Trappists set- 
tled thereabouts and occupied a monastic building, 
which they erected on the summit of the mound. After 
only a few years' sojourn, the solitude seeking relig- 
ionists returned to France. But little evidence re- 
mains of their occupancy. 

The Mound Builders never failed to exercise saga- 
cious judgment in their choice of sites for habitation 
or the erection of their chief structures. Xo better 
place could have been found for the Cahokia and its 
surrounding mounds than in the upper Mississippi 
valley near the juncture of the Missouri from the 
West and the Illinois from the Northeast, a strateget- 
ical point on the main waterways of the vast North- 
west. For many miles below the mouth of the Mis- 
souri, the east side of the Mississippi broadens into 
a plain some eight or ten miles in width, interrupted 
by a line of bluffs which form its eastern boundary. 
This stretch of level surface composed of rich, fertile, 
alluvial deposit is known as the "American Bottom." 
Several creeks cross it from its eastern limit to the 
Mississippi and many little lakes formerly dotted the 
thick growths of timber and prolific underbrush that 
in the early days must have clothed it. This was a 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



3 



prime hunting territory for fish, fowl and game, well 
adapted to the primitive life of a prehistoric people. 
Near the center of this bottom and just south of its 
chief stream, the Cahokia stands to-day, as it has 
stood for untold centuries, the most massive and im- 
posing monument of the Mound Builders in this 
country and probably in the world. Surrounding 
this mound, within a radius of two or three miles, in 
a more or less perfect state of preservation, in vary 
ing shapes and sizes, from ten to sixty feet in height, 
are some fifty lesser mounds. At still greater distances 
from the center structure, in groups or isolated ex- 
amples, are many more. Great numbers have been 
obliterated. Doubtless in the days of the "Golden 
Era" of the Mound Builder, hundreds of mounds 
dotted the American Bottom. Scores of these strange 
earth-heaps originally occupied the site of St. Louis 
and were demolished to make way for the lengthen- 
ing streets and spreading squares of that metropolis. 
On these banks of the mighty river must have been a 
vast population whose labors were almost incredible 
in their results as evidenced by the relics still extant. 

Cahokia Mound is a truncated rectangular pyra- 
mid, rising to a height of one hundred feet above the 
original surface upon which it was built. The 
dimensions of its base are : from north to south, 1,080 
feet; from east to west, 710 feet. The area of the 
base is therefore something over sixteen acres. This 
is a greater area than the base of the Pyramid of 
Cheops — the greatest of the Egyptian tombs. The 



4 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



size may be better understood when compared with 
the State House square in Columbus, which measur- 
ing from fence to fence is ten acres in space; taking 
in the width of the four surrounding streets gives 
nearly the area of the great mound. The mound was 




Plan of Cahokia Mound from Above, Showing Worn Sides. 

originally a curious series of receding terraces, four 
in number. The peculiar design will be better under- 
stood by the accompanying illustrations, than by any 
attempted verbal description. 

In the plan representing the structure as appear- 
ing when viewed from above, the lowest terrace (B) 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 5 

extends 500 feet from east to west and 200 feet from 
north to south. From the south face of that terrace, 
a point (A) having the appearance of a graded ap- 
proach, prospects due south from a distance of about 
eighty feet. The second terrace ( C ) is at the present 
time badly gutted and worn away, which makes it 
difficult to ascertain the exact size or elevation. The 
next terrace (D) has an elevation of ninety-seven 
feet above the original mound base surface. Near 
the center of this terrace there formerly stood a small 
conical mound, long since destroyed. The fourth 
terrace (E) is now the most elevated platform of 
the mound. Its greatest height is one hundred feet 
above the plain or three feet above the third terrace; 
it was probably higher in its pristine condition. 
The area of this summit terrace is about 200 by 160 
feet. The dark line on the left of the mound, lead- 
ing from the base to the summit, is a modern path- 
way for easy ascent. The contents of this mound 
have been estimated to considerably exceed one mil- 
lion cubic yards of earth; and the labor of loading 
and unloading this material or carrying it from a 
likely distance would occupy 2,500 men two years, 
working every day in the year. There is little dis- 
pute among scientists concerning the conclusion that 
this is an artificial mound. Those who have made 
geological demonstrations and archaeological explora- 
tions have generally agreed that this enormous pile 
of earth was built by a primitive and prehistoric 
people and, so far as any evidence can be shown, 



6 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



built br hands with implements of the crudest and 
most primitive character. There are, however, not- 




Cahokia Mound — East Side. 



able exceptions to this agreement. Professor Daniel 
G. Brinton, formerly of the Pennsylvania University 




Cahokia Mound — West Side. 



and one of the most distinguished Americanists of 
this country, says : "It is doubtful whether this 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 7 



(mound) is wholly an artificial construction/' and 
he cites Professor Spencer Smith as saying it is 
"largely a natural formation." There are always 
skeptics no matter how overwhelming the proof. 

This truncated, terraced form of mound had its 
analogy in many of the temples of Mexico and Cen- 
tral America and indeed in many of the early works 
of oriental nations. Such is the monarch, man-made 
mountain as it was raised above the plain in the 
midst of this Mound Builders' country. 

The first view, to the archaeological student, is apt 
to be dispelling of a preconceived idea, which is usu- 
ally that of the mound in its architectural prime. Its 
original clear cut lines and arithmetical proportions 
are blunted by the wear of age. Deep furrows have 
marred its sides and wrinkled its front. Though re- 
sisting valiantly, it has bowed to the storms of nature 
and the vandal assaults of civilized man. 

We climbed the jagged flank to the summit and 
stood upon the elevation that lifted us above the 
surrounding plain. It was an amiable afternoon in 
September; the sun had crossed the Mississippi, and 
well on his way to the western horizon, cast a mellow 
tone over the landscape that lay before us. The broad 
valley gave us a peaceful and pleasing view — stretch- 
ing to the east till cut off by the dim outline of the 
uplands; to the west to the great "Father of Waters" 
ivhich like an irresistible flood plowed its way to the 
Mexican Gulf. Round about on every hand, like con- 
trasting features of a race vanished and forgotten 



8 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



and a people now world predominant, were inter- 
spersed the weather beaten and depleted mounds and 
the prosperous farm homes. In many instances these 
homes were built on the mounds, typifying the con- 
quest of civilization over savagery, the inevitable sur- 
vival of the fittest. It was a scene for the historian 
and the philosopher, the artist and the poet. As one 
writer observes : "There was a double presence which 
was forced upon the mind — the presence of those 
who since the beginning of historic times have visited 
the region and gazed upon this very monument and 
written descriptions of it, one after the other, until 
a volume of literature has accumulated; and the 
presence of those who in prehistoric times filled the 
valley with their works, but were unable to make any 
record of themselves except such as is contained in 
these silent witnesses." Here certainly was one of 
the great centers, if not the chief center, in the west- 
ern continent of this myterious people. Many writers 
and students conclude that if the Mound Builders of 
the territory now embraced in the United States had 
a central government, it must from all evidences, 
have been located here in the American Bottom of 
the Mississippi valley. Here in greatest number were 
found their largest monuments, which bear testi- 
mony to their patience and industry and long so- 
journ. In the mounds and in the intervening fields 
were found astonishing quantities of human bones, 
and crude stone implements of war and of domestic 
life, simple but eloquent witnesses of the most primi- 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 9 



tive stage of human progress. No copper or iron 
artifacts were found. These people had never 
emerged from the age of stone — the rocky road of 
life. ^ 

And was this gigantic earthen structure their 
temple, their religious tabernacle, the "great central 
shrine of the Mound Builders' empire/' "upon which,'' 
suggests one writer and distinguished scholar, "one 
hundred feet above the plain, were their sanctuaries, 
glittering with barbaric splendor and where could be 
seen from afar the smoke and flames of the eternal 
fire, their emblem of the sun." 

"This mound stands," writes Professor Stephen 
D. Peet, "like a solemn monarch, lonely in its gran- 
deur, but imposing in its presence. Though the smoke 
of the great city may be seen in the distance and 
many trains go rumbling across the valley and 
through the great bridge which spans the river, yet 
this monster stands as a mute witness of a people 
which has passed away. It is a silent statute, a 
sphinx, which still keeps within its depths the mys- 
tery which no one has yet fathomed. It perpetuates 
the riddle of the sphinx." 

Was it some mighty tomb erected to be the fit- 
ting mausoleum of a great conqueror or chief — 
some terrible Attila, or invincible Alaric, a Caesar 
or Napoleon of savage days? Small wonder that the 
scene presented from that Cahokia summit awakened 
one's curiosity and stirred one's imagination. Mar- 
velous relic — preservation of a prehistoric people, 



10 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



looming like the dome of a cathedral from the level 
valley — the arena in which a vast race had lived 
and toiled, had come, seen and perhaps had con- 
quered, achieved their ambitions and proudly ex- 
pended their energies. A race of mystery, whence 
and Avhen it came, whither or when it went, no man 
knoweth unto this day. All is locked in impenetrable 
secrecy. As my companions were discussing the un- 
solved riddle of the past, there came to our memory 
Volney's Meditations on the "Ruins of Empires ;" — 
seated amid the demolished architectural splendors 
of Palmyra in the Syrian plain of the historic 
Euphrates, there passed before his "mind's eye" the 
representatives of buried dynasties and dead faiths. 
What a chance was here at Cahokia for some his- 
torico-philosophic dreamer "to interrogate ancient 
monuments on the wisdom of past times." Surely 
here were the remains of a vast and vanished empire. 
In this valley of the Mississippi had flourished, who 
knows how long ago, a mighty nation; they had 
builded better than they knew, for their simple and 
stupendous structures had survived "the tooth of 
time and razure of oblivion." 

The Mound Builder had certainly founded his 
kingdom ; it had flourished, for he had erected imper- 
ishable and inscrutable memorials; imposing struc- 
tures that survived ages and races. Could some wiz- 
ard's wand recall the procession of the people who had 
made their entrees and their exits in this Mississippi 
valley, what a varied and graphic panorama would 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 11 



be unfolded! The Mound Builders had dwelt here 
m great numbers and power for generations, only to 
join "the innumerable caravan that moves to that 
mysterious realm" which is the destiny of races as of 
men ; then came at least one other savage successor, 
the child of the forest, the Indian ; bitter and bloody 
was the struggle of his stay, but his happy hunting 
grounds were to be the dwelling place of the pale 




Original Cahokia Mound. 



face. Yes, even the white intruder, the European 
usurper, had made this American Bottom memorable; 
it had been the field of the national contest for supre- 
macy in. the Western World; in turn the Spaniard, 
the Frenchman, the Briton and the American had 
struggled for this winning of the West ; here DeSoto 
and his gaily attired cavaliers had planted the flag of 
Castile and Aragon; here the Jesuit priest and the 
adventurous couriers de hois had sought favor with 



12 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



the rednien and claimed the basin of the Mississippi 
for La Belle France; here the insatiable Anglo-Saxon 
had supplanted the banner of the Bonrbons with the 
standard of St. George and the Dragon; and here 
that patriotic and dauntless "Washington of the 
West/' Colonel George Sogers Clark and his heroic 
little band of Virginia riflemen had carried in tri- 
umph the Stars and Stripes and saved the Northwest 
Territory to the infant republic ; and now "last scene 
of all that ends this strange eventful history," the 
peaceful homes of the American farmer crown the 
summits of the temples of the Mound Builders. Is 
this the final chapter or are others yet to be written? 
Macauley, in his famous prophecy, wrote: "She 
(Rome) saw the commencement of all the govern- 
ments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments 
that now exist in the world; and we feel no assur- 
ance that she is not destined to see the end of them 
all. She was great and respected before the Saxon 
had set foot on Britain, — before the French had 
passed the Rhine, — when Grecian eloquence still 
flourished at Antioch, — when idols were still wor- 
shipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still 
exist in undiminished vigor when some traveller from 
New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, 
take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to 
sketch the ruins of St. Paul." 

So the Mound Builder was here before European 
civilization found its foothold on the Western Con- 
tinent, and his relics have survived centuries of civil- 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 13 



ized conflict ; perhaps a cycle hence some representa- 
tive of another race yet unborn, the ultimate racial 
composite man, may stand upon the summit of Caho- 
kia and as he wonders over its age and origin may 
look about him and witness the ruins of an antique 
American Republic while he recalls the poet's sum- 
mary : 

"There is the moral of all human tales ; 

'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past. 
First freedom, and then glory — when that fails, 

Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarian at last, 
And history, with all its volumes vast, 

Hath but one page." 



THE OHIO MOUND BUILDERS. 



Just what relation, geographical and ethnological, 
the builders of the mounds bore to the Mississippi 
valley and its branch basins will probably never be 
fully known. So far as the evidences, discovered by 
the early European intruder, can testify, the portion 
of the United States embraced within the central val- 
ley named and its tributaries, Avas the chief domain 
and center of those peculiar people, who for want of 
a better or more specific appellation we designate 
as the Mound Builders. Whether this domain was 
the land of his origin, a great way station in the pil- 
grimage of his race through its earthly existence, or 
was the terminus of prolonged peregrinations, has 
not been determined. The latest developments of sci- 
ence in the effort to locate the cradle of the human 
race, suggests, with much plausible argument, the 
shifting of humanity's nativity from the valley of the 
Euphrates to the valley of the Mississippi. Possibly 
science and scholarship, keen and indefatigable, may 
some day rend the veil and reveal the past of the ear- 
liest aboriginal Americans. Of the results of the lat- 
est investigations and the sequential conclusions of 
ethnology and archaeology, we shall speak later on. 
The accumulated literature, concerning these mys- 
terious people and their monuments, by official au- 

(14) 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 15 

thorities, voluntary scientists, amateur investigators, 
poetic romancers and irresponsible, irrepressible and 
illiterate dreamers, is appalling in quantity, contra- 
dictory in statement and theory, conflicting in con- 
clusions and often amusing and absurd. No key of 
knowledge has yet been found to unlock the enigma 
of the Mound Builder's existence. Hence the Mound 
Builder and his "doings' 1 afford untrammeled scope 
for the imagination; he has been the subject of 
boundless speculation and wildest conjecture; he 
left literally footprints on the sands of time, but their 
trail leads only to oblivion; he left no written rec- 
ords, and his temples tell no tales as to their time or 
purpose ; his only answer to every conceivable guess 
concerning his source, age and destiny is his un- 
broken silence; like the Sphinx of Egypt his sealed 
lips give back no reply, no hint, to the myriad queries 
as to his identity. The Mound Builder is the race 
with the Iron Mask; nor is there likelihood that his 
racial features will ever be revealed, for no oracle of 
learning has yet been enticed to betray his secret. 
The Mound Builder, whoever he was, displayed his 
activities in a spacious arena. No pent up Utica con- 
tracted his powers and if the whole boundless con- 
tinent was not his, a large part of it was. His works 
extended from the sources of the Alleghany, in west- 
ern New York on the east, to the Rocky Mountain 
range on the west, and in some instances on to the 
Pacific slope; the Mound Builder is almost unknown 
in New England; he is found in lower Canada, but 



16 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



evidently avoided the colder climates; in the south 
he was much in evidence, his works lined the shores 
of the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida and 
were found in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Missis- 
sippi, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Kentucky. The 
Northwest Territory, however, produces evidences of 
densest population; at least there his habitations 
were most numerous and important. In Wisconsin 
his character apparently took on a "religious turn/' 
for along its larger river courses, he adorned the 
sides and summits of the hills with innumerable "effi- 
gies'' of animals, birds, reptiles and human beings — 
presumptively tributes to his superstitious belief or 
symbols of his crude worship, possibly emblematic 
totems of his various tribes. Michigan did not greatly 
receive his attention; mounds occur frequently in 
Indiana, but are prolific in Illinois as we have noted. 

Ohio was a region for which he displayed most 
remarkable partiality. The banks of "La Belle Ri- 
viere," as the early French called the majestic Ohio, 
and the pictureque and fertile valleys of the Miamis, 
the Scioto, the Muskingum and lesser streams were 
the scenes of his most numerous, most extensive and 
most "continuous performances." It has been asserted, 
without dispute, that the localities in Ohio, which 
testify to the Mound Builders' presence, outnumber 
the total localities of his evidential habitation in all 
the rest of the country. Ohio was the great "State" 
in prehistoric times, for over twelve thousand places 
in the present state-limits have been found and noted. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. J 7 



where the Mound Builder left his testimonial. These 
enclosures on the hill tops, the plain or river bottoms, 
walled-in areas, each embracing from one to three 
hundred acres in space, enclosures presenting a vari- 
ety in design, size and method of construction, un- 
equaled elsewhere, exceed fifteen hundred in number, 
while thousands of single mounds of varying cir- 
cumference and height were scattered over the cen- 
tral and southwestern part of the state. One thing 
is clearly demonstrated by this tremendous "show- 
ing," viz., that these people either continued in 
more or less sparse numbers through a long space 
of time or they prevailed in vast numbers during 
a more or less brief, contemporaneous period, for 
it has been estimated that the "earthly productions" 
of their labor, now standing in Ohio, if placed 
side by side in a continuous line, would ex- 
tend over three hundred miles or farther than from 
Lake Erie to the Ohio and that they contain at least 
thirty million cubic yards of earth or stone, and that 
it would require one thousand men, each man work- 
ing three hundred days in the year and carrying one 
wagon load of material the required distance, a cen- 
tury to complete these artificial formations; or it 
would take three hundred thousand men one year to 
accomplish the same result. Supposing the laborers 
were exclusively men and allowing the conventional 
average family to each, there would have been a popu- 
lation far exceeding a million people. Whether these 
different structures were built synchronously or near 
2 



18 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



the same period, we hare no means of knowing. The 
structures were almost without exception completed 
before being abandoned ; they left no unfinished work, 
from which it might be inferred that they did not de- 
part prematurely nor in haste. Their works after 
their abandonment were not disturbed, except that 
the single mounds were occasionally utilized by the 
Indians for intrusive burials. The conqueror of the 
Mound Builder, if he had one, had respect for the 
spoils of conquest and left the victorious monuments 
inviolate and intact ; pity it is the same cannot be 
said for his pale faced successor. 

This white man's vandalism as compared with the 
red man's reverence for the mortuary monuments of 
the vanished race is interestingly expressed in the 
poetic lines of Mr. Thomas Backus, one of the earliest 
poets of the Capital City. The sentiment was sug- 
gested by the incident that a large and beautiful 
mound standing in the precincts of the original plat 
for Columbus was demolished, the clay taken there- 
from and used as the material for the bricks with 
which the first State House was built. In this mound 
were found many graves filled with the crumbling 
bones of the unrecorded but honored dead. 

Oh Town ! consecrated before 
The white man's foot e'er trod our shore, 
To battle's strife and valour's grave, 
Spare ! oh spare, the buried grave. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



19 



Oh, Mound ; consecrated before 
The White man's foot e'er trod on shore 
To battle's strife and valour's grave, 
Spare : oh, spare, the buried brave. 

A thousand winters passed away, 
And yet demolished not the clay, 
Which on yon hillock held in trust 
The quiet of the warrior's dust. 

The Indian came and went again ; 
He hunted through the lengthened plain; 
And from the mound he oft beheld 
The present silent battlefield. 

But did the Indian e'er presume, 
To violate that ancient tomb? 
Ah, no : he had the soldier's grace 
Which spares the soldier's resting place. 

It is alone for Christian hand 
To sever that sepulchral band, 
Which even to the view is spread, 
To bind the living to the dead. 

It is not the purpose of this treatise to attempt 
any exhaustive or minute account or detailed enum- 
eration of the vestiges left by this people. Rather 
is it the intention to mention, with more or less brief 
portrayal, the masterpieces of the different classes of 
their exploits. We, of course, confine our recital to the 
works extant in the present limits of Ohio. We will 
pass these works in review and discuss their origin 
in the following order: (1) Walled enclosures, (2) 



20 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



Single mounds, (3) Village sites and burial grounds, 
and (4) Theories respecting the identity and exist- 
ence of the Mound Builder. 

The so-called "enclosures" include a great variety 
of structures, in which an area, of greater or less 
extent, is shut in. This title embraces those which 
cap the hill-tops and are usually regarded as "forts" 
or military defenses. These are built of stone or earth 
and in some rare instances of both. The hill-top de- 
fenses are not relatively numerous but exhibit in their 
construction great engineering sagacity and skill and 
almost inconceivable labor. The enclosures on the 
plains or river bottoms are almost exclusively of 
earthen material and are either walled towns or 
structures for refuge and safety; possibly some of 
them were religious temples. They are of all dimen- 
sions and forms, many of them presenting combina- 
tions of circles, and squares and geometrical figures 
of every variety. They enclose from a fraction of 
an acre to hundreds of acres. They are literally 
"wonders" and more and more excite the curiosity of 
the lay spectator and the awe and admiration of the 
archaeological student. 

We will look first at the "stone forts," which 
though comparatively few in number are of intense 
interest, owing to the shrewdness displayed in their 
location and the military instinct and engineering 
architecture evinced in their construction. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 21 



SPRUCE HILL FORT. 

The chief of these upland bulwarks, indeed the 
largest stone edifice of the Mound Builders in this 
country, was erected on Spruce Hill, in the south- 
ern part of Koss county. This work occupies the 
level summit of a hill some four hundred feet 
in height ; the elevation is a long triangular shaped 
spur, terminating a range of hills with which it is 
connected by a narrow neck or isthmus, the latter 
affording the really only accessible approach to the 
"fort," for the hillsides at all other points are re- 
markably steep and in places practically perpendicu- 
lar. The summit commands a wide outlook over the 
surrounding country. Within a radius of two or 
three miles on the plain beneath, to the east, north 
and west, were groups of aboriginal works, includ- 
ing isolated mounds and extensive enclosures. It 
was the midst of a mound-building neighborhood; 
the site of Chillicothe, a great aboriginal center, was 
some eleven miles distant to the northeast. No place 
more advantageous for the purposes of defense or 
observation could have been chosen. The barrier con- 
sisted of a wall composed entirely of stone, mostly 
fragments of sandstone from the hill ledge and cob- 
blestones, found in abundance on the summit. No 
earth was used in the wall, the line of which was 
carried around the hill a little below the brow. This 
barricade, once so complete and impregnable, is now 
sadly depleted and displaced ; the victim of the wear 
and tear of hoary time, the upheaval of the elements, 



22 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



and the spoliation by thrifty farmers, who repair their 
fences with the "inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, 
all scattered" the summit and hillside about ; most 
ruthless enemy of all to lay siege to the battlements 
were the tall primitive trees which sprang up beneath 
and around the curious, loose masonry, thrusting and 
twisting their roots among the stones and with 
irresistible strength lifting and scattering them 
apart; in many instances firmly imbedding them in 
their trunks ; a royal battle, an irrepressible conflict, 
this has been between the stolid stones and the grow- 
ing giants of the forest; for untold cycles, possibly 
for more than a millennium, this contest has been 
waged, and many a monarch of the woods worn and 
bent with the life of centuries has at last fallen in 
decay amid the crude and crumbling masonry, thus 
testifying to the vast period that this fort has stood, 
grim guardian of its charge. At the present time 
the stone structure, "trembling all precipitate down 
dashed," merely suggests its pristine regularity and 
form. The appearance of the ruins demonstrates 
that the line had an average base width of eight or ten 
feet and a height of six or eight, the stones being piled 
one upon the other with no other means than their 
own weight to hold them in place. The width and 
height of the wall originally varied, as the ruins in- 
dicate, according to the requirements of the summit 
contour and the naturally weak or strong defense 
features of the line followed. At the places where the 
approach was most easy the wall was broadest, being 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 23 



at points thirty feet and even more across the base. 
The wall is entirely wanting at one point where the 
perpendicular rock cliff rendered protection unneces- 




Spruce Hill Fort. 



sary. Where the defense crosses the isthmus, some 
seven hundred feet wide, the wall was heaviest and 
here was the main entrance, with three gateways 
opening upon the terrace extending beyond. This 



24 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



gateway consisted of three openings in the Avail, the 
intercepting segments of which, in each case, curving 
inwards, formed a horseshoe, whose inward curves 
were forty or fifty feet in length, leaving narrow pas- 
sages, no wider than eight feet, between. At these 
gateways, the amount of stones is more than four 
times the quantity at other points of the wall, and 
constituted broad, mound-shaped heaps. Between 
these heaps, through the narrow defile, the enemy 
would have to pass in attempting an entrance. On 
the east wall apparently two other single gateways 
originally existed, as indicated by the curved lines, 
but these were subsequently closed up. At the north- 
ern apex of the fort another gateway existed, pro- 
tected as the others by inward carrying walls. Ex- 
cepting the isthmus, this was perhaps the most vul- 
nerable point of the hill-top — as the sides sloped 
down into the valley, affording steep but possible 
ascent. Here the walls were unusually high and 
strong. The stone heaps at the great gateway give 
proof of having been subjected to intense heat, a 
feature also discernible at certain other points in 
the wall. Within the enclosure were found two stone 
mounds, located near points of the breastworks 
which commanded the fartherest extent of view. 
These mounds were burned throughout, suggesting 
that great fires may have been maintained thereon, 
perhaps for alarm signals, perhaps for religious cere- 
monies, perhaps for sacrificial rites. 

There were several depressions in the enclosed 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



25 



space, one covering two acres, which could afford con- 
stant supply of water. There was no moat or ditch 
at any point, either exterior or interior to the wall. 
The wall, continuous save at the interruptions men- 
tioned above, measures two and a quarter miles in 
length and encloses an area of over one hundred and 




The "Pond" in Spruce Hill Fort. 



forty acres. The magnitude of this hill-top stone en- 
closure exceeds any similar construction attributed to 
the Mound Builder. It evinces tremendous labor and 
unusual ingenuity of arrangement. The wonder at 
this stupendous labor grows when it is considered 
that it must have been erected without the aid of 



26 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



beasts of burden or mechanical contrivances. It was 
literally built by hand labor by "piece work." Such a 
fortress, so situated, must have been, to a primitive 
people, impervious to the storm of savage warfare. It 
knew no surrender save to a vandal demolition of a 
modern, ruthless civilization; "but man would mar 
them with an impious hand." This effacement is of 
comparatively a recent date. As we learn from the in- 
vestigators who first left descriptions, the result of 
surveys in the first third of the last century, the walls 
were then in a fair state of preservation and easily fol- 
lowed in outline and reconstructed in plan. Now ob- 
literation almost reigns supreme. Some ten years ago, 
the writer with a party of experts, personally in- 
spected the remaining ruins and from them, with 
slight play of the imagination, could rebuild the crude 
fortress. Another inspection during the preparation 
of this monograph, gave evidence of the final touches 
of a destructive hand. The line of the walls presented 
little more than dismantled, scattered, brush-covered 
heaps of grass-grown stones; the great gateway in 
diminished height and demolished shape was still 
there, as if reluctant to yield its post, grimly strug- 
gling to forbid entrance to the spacious field of grow- 
ing corn that filled the enclosure; the little pond, 
still holding water, had shrunk to a fraction of its 
former size; from its depths the gutteral croak of a 
bull frog seemed to mockingly sound the death knell 
to even the memories of the greatness and glory of 
Spruce Hill Fort. Surely in this desolation was there 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 27 

theme for some poet, for an apostrophe such as 
Byron's on the passing of the Eternal City : 

"Come and see the cypress, hear the owl, 
And plod your way o'er broken thrones and temples. 
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay." 



Spruce Hill and Paint Creek Valley. 

But there is one feature left intact. The insati- 
able tiller of the soil may tear clown prehistoric walls 
to "mend his fences/- and plow level the mounds 
erected on the plain, that he may plant a few more 
stalks of corn, but his greed has thus far invented no 
method of devastating the landscape. Nature-loving 
Thoreau mourned that the axe was slowly destroying 



28 



Masterpieces of the Mo and Builders. 



his forest. "Thank God," he exclaimed, "they can- 
not cut down the clouds." Iconoclastic agriculture 
has kindly left the scene which rewards the ascent of 
Spruce Hill — a captivating view such as seldom 



Your outlook sweeps the Paint Creek valley for 
miles on either side; the peacefuly flowing stream 
winds its way through fields glowing in the varied 
colors of the summer's ripening grain, all framed 
by the encircling, gentle-sloping, forest-clad hills. 
Were this scene in Bonnie Scotland, travelers would 
cross the sea to extol its surpassing beauty. 



"Hills and valleys, dales and fields, 
Woods or steepy mountain yields." 





Fort Hill — Highland County. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 29 

HIGHLAND FORT HILL. 

Much smaller though in many respects more strik- 
ing than the Spruce Hill fort is the fortification in 
Brush Creek township, Highland county, two and a 




Fort Hill (Highland Co.) — South Entrance from Outside. 



half miles northwest of Sinking Springs, It is the 
best preserved of the stone defensive works of the 
Ohio Mound Builders. It was first described by 
Prof. John Locke, of Cincinnati, in the Ohio Geolog- 
ical Keport for 1838. Squier and Davis made a thor- 



30 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



ough examination of it in 1846, publishing the result 
in their work on the "Ancient Monuments." Many 
surveys have been made since that time, notably one 
by Henry A. Shepherd, who gives an excellent de- 
scription in his "Ohio Antiquities." 

Fort Hill, entirely detached by Brush creek and 




Fort Hill (Highland Co.) — South Entrance of Fort from Outside. 



deep ravines from any other elevation, rises abruptly 
about five hundred feet above the river bottom. The 
sides for the most part present a succession of minor 
cliffs, shale banks, wash-outs and jutting rocks; in 
many places the precipitous sides shoot up in perpen- 
dicular palisades. Only at two points can the summit 
be reached and then by no easy effort as the writer 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 31 



can testify from personal experience. Encircling the 
top of the hill, which presents a level area of some 
fifty acres, is an embankment of earth and stones, 
mostly the latter, which were first piled up, the earth 
then being nsed as a filler, a sort of road or walk cov- 




Fort Hill (Highland Co.) — Embankment, Showing General 
Terminus Running in from one of the Openings. 



ering the top. The stone was found on the spot in the 
weathered fragments of the sandstone ledge which 
crowns the hill. The wall, which mainly follows the 
brow of the hill, has an average base of about thirty- 
five feet ; its height varies from six to ten feet, though 



32 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



at some points it reaches a height of fifteen feet. In- 
terior to the wall is a trench or ditch, some fifty feet 
in width. It was easily made by the displacement of 
the material for the wall. The length of this wall is 
between eight and nine thousand feet, or over a mile 
and a half. It has been estimated that it contains 
seventy-five thousand cubic yards of material. By 
glancing at the diagram it will be seen the wall-line, 
conforming to the shape of the hill summit, consists 
of four unequal sides, curved inwards and meeting in 
four acute points, "salient angles," at which there 
are peculiar open bastions, the ends of the walls run- 
ning outward a little so as to protect the entrance 
space. The whole fort in its outline forms the figure 
of a "leg and foot, with slender ankle and sharp heel, 
the two corners of the shin and calf and the heel and 
the toe form the four bastions." The gateway openings 
are thirty-three in number and are spaces ten to fif- 
teen feet in width, arranged without apparent order 
or regularity except that the same number is found 
on each side. The purpose of so many openings is 
inexplicable. They surely were not needed for in- 
gress and egress, indeed some of them, especially the 
one at the northern extremity, the toe, occur upon the 
very steepest points of the hill, where the approach 
or ascent is almost impossible. This northern tip of 
the hill presents a bold, bluff ledge, some two hun- 
dred feet wide and rising twenty feet above the en- 
circling wall. It is altogether the most prominent 
point of the hill and commands, like a sentinel tower, 




3 



Highland (Co.) Fort Hill. 



34 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



a wide extent of country. Here the early explorers 
report were strong evidences of the action of fire on 
the rocks. Doubtless it was the beacon station, the 
flaming lights of which could be seen for miles in all 
directions. There were within this enclosure three 




Fort Hill (Highland Co.) — Embankment and Ditch, from Inside 

Southeast Section of Fort. 



depressions or ponds, the largest of which had a well 
defined retaining embankment; when full the water 
must have covered an acre. This would indicate that 
this fortification was capable of sustaining a large 
defensive force for a long period of time. Certainly 
the situation and construction made it difficult to 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 35 

assault and well nigh impossible to capture. Its site 
could not have been better chosen, yet this hill was 
not, apparently, surrounded by any populous or 
numerous settlements of the Mound Builders, judg- 
ing from the fact that excepting two or three iso- 
lated mounds, there is no remaining evidence of 
these people nearer than Serpent Mound, the most 
mysterious product of its creators, which was some 
ten miles distant. Such are the natural and arti- 
ficial features of Fort Hill. The peculiar method of 
its construction and the inaccessibility of its location 
have enabled this fort to withstand the siege of time 
and human demolition better than the enclosure of 
Spruce Hill or any similar work. 

It was one summer morning, just as Phoebus was 
starting on his daily round, that the writer and a 
companion, slowly ascended the steep and irregular 
path that leads to the southeast corner of the sum- 
mit. Well rewarded were we for our perspiring pains. 
A magnificent stretch of golden field and green for- 
est, sinuous stream and undulating plain, responded 
to our gaze. When could such a landscape tire the 
view? The hill, the scene, in the splendid glow of 
the risen sun brought to our memory its counterpart, 
the Wartburg hill, in the Thuringian forest, a hill 
similar in height and form but crowned by a ducal 
castle and medieval towers. Nature had given almost 
as picturesque a setting to Fort Hill, but here the 
crowning battlements were of a different age and far 
dissimilar architecture. We mounted the wall and 



36 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



pushing through the obstructing underbrush, roots, 
decayed trunks and branches of fallen trees, we pa- 
tiently picked our way along the top of the wall for the 
entire circuit, the earthen filling of the embankment 
and the time accumulating forest-debris forming a 
substantial foot path. 

This crude but decay-defying parapet was the cun- 




Fort Hill (Highland Co.) — Showing Wall and Ditch. 



ning work of the primitive savage, the ferocious war- 
rior of a stone age; here in time of war he resorted 
for refuge and to light his fires to warn his people 
in the valley that the stealthy and relentless enemy 
was on the war path. 

That those brave days were long, long ago, is 
proven by the scattered trunks and limbs of the 
fallen arboreal heroes and the still standing ven- 
erable giants of the forest. Every evidence of great 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 37 

antiquity is here presented. Hundreds of years 
these manimoth-trunked, lofty-limbed, old fellows 
had grown and wrestled with the winds and storms 
that beat about this fort. Some of them in hoary 



Fort Hill (Highland Co.) — Embankment from Outside, Showing 
Steepness of Ascent. 

age were to go down at last in the unequal strug- 
gle against the elements. Locke, Squier and Davis, 
Shepherd and subsequent experts designate chest- 
nut and poplar and other trees still standing with 
the age, so they claim, of six hundred years and 



38 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders, 



more. And these surviving witnesses stood over 
and grew from the decomposed remains, half hidden 
by the accumulating soil of predecessors of similar 
size and perhaps equal longevity. These trees, liv- 
ing and dead, surely turn back the hands on the dial 




Fort Hill (Highland Co.) — -Embankment from Outside, Southwest 
Section of Fort. 



of time and point to a most remote period before the 
stone heaps were even abandoned and how long had 
they stood before the forest took possession is beyond 
human ken. What would one give for the story of 
this primitive fortress, its patient and painstaking 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 39 



builders, their life within its precincts, their feats of 
daring and suffering, the long starving sieges, their 
brave and death dealing sorties, the storm and stress 
of relentless conflict, when to the arrow and missels 
of the boldly approaching foe they returned thrusts 




Fort Hill (Highland Co.)— Wall and Ditch. 

of flint spears and hurlings of crushing bowlders. 
Could they have been recorded and preserved, may 
not the annals of these people have left us topics 
for epics as thrilling and dramatic as those of the 
Iliad and the Aeneid. But their heritage to us is 
oblivion. The only response to our earnest query 



40 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

for their past was the gentle flutter of the leaves as 
they met the morning breeze — 

"Only this and nothing more." 

"STONE FORT" AT GLENFORD. 

A "fortification," known as the Glenford Stone 
Fort, is one of the most interesting and important 















































- I 
m 










\1 ; j 







Fort Hill (Highland Co.)— Wall on Southwest Side of Fort. 
Tree Stump Estimated about 400 Years Old. 



hill-top enclosures, because of its admirable location 
and the fact that its remains are still sufficient for its 
form to be easily traced and its construction to be un- 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 41 

derstood. The fort receives its Glenford designation 
from the little station of that name, at which the tour- 
ist alights in a journey of investigation. The geogra- 
phy of this hill and the situation of the fort are both 
nearly reproductions on a smaller scale of Spruce 
hill and its fort. The Glenford hill, crowded by the 
fort, is located in the northern part of Perry county, 
and is the northwestern terminus of a range of up- 
land that juts into a beautiful valley extending 
perhaps two miles respectively east and west. This 
peninsula projection is isolated from the connecting 
high land, except for a narrow ridge which gently 
declines a short distance towards the southeast, then 
rises to the general level. The jutting land point is 
elevated about three hundred feet above the Jona- 
than creek that skirts the western slope. The hill 
summit, practically level, is terminated in nearly 
every direction by a vertical ledge of sandstone from 
six to ten feet in thickness, the outcrop of the cap- 
rock. This ledge on the northwestern hill side, in 
many places, forms a solid natural perpendicular 
wall, formidable and unscalable. Indeed the hill is 
precipitous in its rise at all points, save at the neck 
and for a few hundred feet on the eastern side where 
the bluff is absent and the hillside, part way down, 
becomes a gentle slope. The selection of such a site 
again demonstrates the acute cunning of the Mound 
Builders. No locality could better answer his pur- 
pose. A hill commanding the valley; a level space 
for enclosure; a defense partly provided by nature 



42 



Masterpiece* of the Mound Builders. 



and a quarry readily at hand for the masonry of his 
wall. Considering what must have been his mode of 
warfare, here could be erected a citadel that would 
defy attack. The wall of the fort, formed solely of 
the sandstone fragments found on the spot, follows 
closely around the summit margin except where the 




Jonathan Creek Valley Looking West from Glenford Fort. 



protruding ledge stratum required no artificial de- 
fense and where the hillside sloped, in which latter 
case the wall was continued below the summit, appar- 
ently an injudicious arrangement, though at such 
places the wall must have been made unusually de- 
fensive in size and form. The line of this wall, as 
evidenced by the remaining scattered stones, can be 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 43 

traced intact along its entire length, though so many 
of the stones have been hauled away it is difficult to 
determine the original dimensions and shape. The 
total length was 6,610 feet, something over a mile and 
a quarter, and it is safe to conjecture that while hav- 




Glenford Fort — West Wall. 



ing a varying size, as the sections of the summit to 
be protected required, it must have had an average 
of ten or twelve feet in base and a general height of 
six or eight. At the southeast corner was the chief 
gateway opening upon the isthmus connecting with 



44 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



the extending hill range. Here the wall was re- 
entrant along the sides and greatly strengthened, as 
at Spruce Hill. We have said this was the main gate- 
way, indeed it may hare been the only one, as there 
is now no positive evidence of any other. There was 




Glenford Fort — East Wall. 



no moat adjoining the wall. The area enclosed was 
about twenty-six acres and is clear of all stones, pre- 
sumably all having been gathered up to form the 
walls — except those used to construct a large stone 
mound, located as indicated in the diagram. This 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 45 

mound was conical shaped, one hundred feet in diam- 
eter and within the memory of persons now living 
was some twenty feet high. It has been greatly dis- 
turbed by explorers. The purpose of this mound can 
only be guessed. Possibly it was the look-out or sig- 
nal station. A smaller stone heap formerly existed in 
another part of the fort. On several of the hills 
flanking the Jonathan creek valley were earthen 
mounds the fires of which could easily have been seen 
from this fort. Indeed the gentleman, a resident 
of Glenford village, who acted as our guide over the 
fort, informed us that extending across the country 
for a distance of some twenty-five miles was a series 
of hill-top mounds, so placed that smoke or fire sig- 
nals could be exchanged between them. On one hill 
some two miles west of the fort was an earthen wall 
enclosure encircling two or three acres, presumably 
a defensive work. Evidently in Mound Building days 
there were great "doings" in these parts and as our 
aforesaid guide remarked, "those old fellows, who- 
ever they were, knew their business." 

This fort was early made famous by Caleb At- 
vvater, Ohio's first historian and archaeologist ; he was 
a graduate of Williams College ; a lawyer, member of 
Ohio Legislature and Indian commissioner under 
Andrew Jackson. He was born on Christmas, 1778, in 
North Adams, Massachusetts. In 1815 he made Cir- 
cleville (Ohio) his home and there resided till his 
death in 1867. He was a man of great scholarly at- 
tainments, a prolific and forceful writer. He made 



46 Masterpiece* of the Mound Builders. 



extensive study of the Avorks of the Ohio Mound 
Builders. He visited the fort — afterwards called 
Glenford — in 1818 and carefully describes it in an 
elaborate report he made to the American Anti- 
quarian Society of Worcester, Mass. This report was 
published in the proceedings of the Society for 1820. 
It is interesting and instructive to recall what such 
an authority said at so early date concerning this fort. 
Mr. Atwater writes : 

"This large stone work contains within its walls forty acres and 
upwards. The walls, as they are called in popular language, con- 
sist of rude fragments of rocks, without any marks of any iron 
tool upon them. These stones lie in the utmost disorder, and if 
laid up in a regular wall, would make one seven feet or seven 
feet six inches in height, and from four to six feet in thickness. I 
do not believe this ever to have been a military work, either of 
defense or offense ; but if a military work, it must have been a 
temporary camp. From the circumstance of this work's containing 
two stone tumuli, such as were used in ancient times, as altars and 
as monuments, for the purpose of perpetuating the memory of some 
great era, or important event in the history of those who raised 
them, I should rather suspect this to have been a sacred enclosure 
or 'high place,' which was resorted to on some great anniversary. 
It is on high ground, and destitute of water, and of course, could 
not have been a place of habitation for any length of time. It 
might have been the place, where some solemn feast was annually 
held by the tribe by which it was formed. The place has become 
a forest, and the soil is too poor to have ever been cultivated by 
a people who invariably chose to dwell on a fertile spot. These 
monuments of ancient manners, how simple and yet how sublime. 
Their authors were rude, and unacquainted with the use of letters, 
yet they raised monuments, calculated almost for endless duration, 
and speaking a language as expressive as the most studied inscrip- 
tions of latter times upon brass and marble. These monuments, 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 




48 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 




Glenford Fort from Plan Made by Caleb Atwater 1818 and Printed 
in Proceedings American Antiquarian Society 1820. 

their stated anniversaries and traditionary accounts, were their 
means of perpetuating the recollection of important transactions. 
Their authors are gone; their monuments remain; but the events, 
which they were intended to keep in the memory, are lost in ob- 
livion." 

So appeared this fort ninety years ago. To-day 
Stone Fort is a most attractive place to visit, the 
view from the hill top presenting the little valley 
and encircling miniature mountains, is a scene to 
please the eye and stir the poetic sentiment. The 
old fort is a romantic ruin, for mingled with its scat- 
tered and crumbling crude masonry are the trees of 
all ages, growths, shapes and varieties; maple, oak, 
beech, chestnut, elm, poplar, ash and others canopy 
with overhanging branches the moss grown stones 
of the walls and with their clutching roots push the 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 49 



sandstone blocks asunder. In one striking instance 
a sturdy century-old poplar had entwined his roots 
about the wall and pried them beneath the surface 
layer of the bed rock ; the storm came and overthrew 
the tree ; the firm grasp of its underground branches 
lifted the natural stone foundations upright, creating 




Glenford Fort — West Wall 



a perpendicular wall some ten feet square, level as a 
marble floor and encased in a lace net work of roots 
and tendrils, as the leaden filigree interlocks the 
glass figures of cathedral window : 

"Who can impress the forest, bid the tree unfix his earth-bound 
root?" 

4 



50 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 




Archaeological Map of Ohio — Showing Chief Mounds and En- 
closures of Prehistoric People. From the reports of the Smith- 
sonian Institution by Cyrus Thomas, in 1891. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



51 



At Glenford Fort the pranks of nature were 
scarcely less interesting than the proofs of the prow- 
ess of primitive man. 

MIAMI FORT. 

By glancing at the archaeological map of Ohio, it 
will be seen that the southwest portion of the state, 
especially the valleys of the Great and Little Miamis, 




was the region most crowded with the habitations 
and monuments of the Mound Builders. 

Within the present limits of Hamilton county, 
between four and five hundred mounds and some 
fifteen important enclosures were noted by the early 
travelers and settlers. The most famous and notice- 
able of the latter is the one on the a Fort Hill at the 
mouth of the Great Miami." It has been generally 



52 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

designated as the "Miami Fort," but this Miami fort 
must not be confounded with the historic Fort Miami, 
the first fortification in Ohio, built first by the 
French in 1680 and rebuilt by the British in 1785, 
at the foot of the rapids of the Maumee. 

The "Miami Fort" is small in size but important 



Walls and Gateway — Miami Fort. 

in situation and suggestion. It was first brought 
into notice in the literature concerning the Mound 
Builders by William Henry Harrison, who though 
a Virginian by birth became an Ohioan by adoption, 
marrying a daughter of John Cleves Symmes and 
settling at North Bend, where his remains are now 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 53 

buried. General Harrison was a man of unusual 
literary and historical acquirements, and had he 
never been known as a general or president he 
would have won distinction as a scholar. He pro- 
foundly studied the Ohio Mound Builders and the 
Ohio Indians and we are indebted to him for much 
valuable investigations and information on those 
subjects. He carefully surveyed "Miami Fort," 
giving his results in a scholarly address, pub- 
lished (1839) in the Transactions of the His- 
torical and Philosophical Society of Ohio. We give 
his plan as adopted and reproduced by Squier and 
Davis. The site of this fort is strikingly analogous 
to the hill forts heretofore described. The Great 
Miami, flowing southwest, debouches into the Ohio 
at a sharp angle. An upland elevation, some two 
hundred feet or more in height, thrusts its nose 
prominently out into this land angle, separating the 
two rivers. On the peak of this elevation is the for- 
tification. It is very nearly a parallelogram in 
shape, conforming to the summit contour of the 
hill. The walls are unusually massive and strong, 
the mean cross-section being considerably in excess 
of that of any other enclosure in the state. These 
ramparts, in places sadly depleted, are in large meas- 
ure well preserved and though 

Here giant weeds a passage scare allow 

and sections of the protective works have been 

Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide ; 



54 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

the experienced explorer may easily follow the lines 
of defense, which are from thirty to fifty feet at the 
base with a height of ten feet or more. They are 
built of earth and stone, the latter being plentifully 
used to give strength and stability to the earth filling. 




Section of Wall — Miami Fort. 



Three or four gullies have worked their way into the 
fort, but the gateways or artificial openings could not 
have been more than two or three in number. The 
declivities on the north and south sides of the fort 
are precipitious and in the olden days must have 
been almost unascendable, indeed for some distance 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 55 

on either of the longer sides, so perpendicular are 
the hillsides that it is quite impossible to detect the 
line dividing the hilltop from the base of the wall. 
The area enclosed is only about twelve acres. It was 
a snug little fort. Below the southwest wall, facing 
the Ohio, is a gentle slope, leading to the summit of 




Miami Fort — From Indiana Geological Report for 1879. 



a "nub" or circular spur of the hill, upon which is 
a conspicuous mound, some fifty feet in diameter and 
originally, probably, ten to fifteen feet in height. It 
has been much plowed down. From this "observa- 
tory" mound one obtains the most entrancing view 
in the state of Ohio. The valley of the Great Miami 
is at your feet on the west; just across the gently 



56 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



flowing stream are the hilly ranges of Indiana, 
through which courses the White Water River, min- 
gling its singularly pure blue and green water with 
the muddy yellow of the Miami, just a mile or two 
above the latter's entrance into the Ohio. On the 
south at your feet with majestic swerve sweeps the 

"Ohio-peh-li ! Peek-han-ni ! The pride 
Of the land where thy waters, O-pel-e-chen, glide; 

Through thy vales, and the hills in the distance that loom, 
Seen far through the azure, or lost in the gloom, 
Have long been the homes of the noble and brave, 
Whose proud halls are built on the Indian's grave." 

Stretching along the south banks of the Ohio are 
the rolling hills of "Old Kentuck," the sunny land 
of "Dixie." The rushing waters of these uniting riv- 
ers bring to the mind a flood of historic memories, 
in the days of discovery and frontier settlement. 
Down this Ohio and up this Miami came the chival- 
rous and grotesque expedition of Celoron from Quebec 
with his Indians in feathers and war paint and his 
French soldiers in the gay trappings of a medieval 
crusade. At the mouth of La Riviere a la Roche, as 
the French then called the Great Miami, Celoron 
moored his little navy of birch bark canoes and with 
courtly and dramatic ceremonies planted his last lead 
plate, proclaiming that these rivers and all their tribu- 
taries belonged to his majesty, Louis, King of France. 
That was August, 1749. And then the little white 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders, 57 



fleet of twenty or more light gondolas pushed up the 
"a la Boche" to Pickawillany, carrying the Bourbon 
banner across the Buckeye State. 

But before all this, centuries and centuries before, 
this beautiful scene of hill, vale and river had a geo- 
logic record. It was a mid-summer day, that Pro- 




Junction of Big Miami and Ohio River — From Miami Fort. 



fessor G. Frederick Wright and the writer, stood on 
the summit of that outlook mound, and reveled in the 
riches of the charming landscape, the scene being 
softened to an artistic atmosphere by the hazy, fleecy 
clouds through which the rays of the August sun 
were tempered. My distinguished companion told 



58 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

the story of the creation of this panorama; how it 
took millions of years to mold this land and carve out 
the great heights and depressions and then how the 
final touches were put to the picture by the icy fingers 
of the glacial hand ; how the great frozen avalanche 
came down "the trough of the Ohio and meeting an 
obstruction near this point, choked the channel and 
formed a glacial dam high enough to raise the level 
of the water five hundred and fifty feet, forming the 
"Ohio Lake." The glaciers acted as great freight cars 
and hauled down sand and gravel and covered the 
hillsides and filled the valleys. The mouth of the 
Great Miami was the southwest point of this great ice 
bed in Ohio. That was decades of centuries before 
the Mound Builders climbed the steep hill, erected 
their stronghold and, according to General Harrison, 
made their last stand for their Ohio land. The gen- 
eral claimed to have discovered evidences of a de- 
fensive line from the base of the hill on one side to 
the Ohio and on the other side to the Miami — en- 
closing a bottom plain of three hundred acres. This 
was to preclude a flank attack on the fort. He sur- 
mises the Mound Builders may have been the Aztecs, 
and says if they were really the Aztecs, "the direct 
course of their journey to Mexico and the facilities 
which that mode of retreat would afford, seem tq 
point out the descent of the Ohio, as the line of that 
retreat. It was here (Miami Fort) that a feeble band 
was collected to make a last effort for the country 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 59 

of their birth, the ashes of their ancestors and the 
altars of their gods." 

Commanding the rivers as it did, Miami Fort was 
certainly one of the most strategic points of the 
Mound Builders' system of defenses. Several archse- 




Section of Wall — Miami Fort 



ological authorities, particularly General M. C. 
Force, whom we cite, in his valuable essay on the 
Ohio Mound Builders, point out that from this eleva- 
tion (Miami Fort) a line of signals could be put in 
operation, which in extent would cover the south- 
western portion of the state : 



60 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



"Three great works on the Great Miami, one at its mouth, one 
at Colerain, and one at Hamilton, with subsidiary defensive works 
extending six miles along the river at Hamilton ; several advanced 
works to north and west of Hamilton, on streams flowing into 
the Great Miami ; and other similar defenses farther up the 
river at Dayton and Piqua. all put in communication with each 
other by signal mounds erected at conspicuous points, constitute 
together a connected line of defenses along the Miami river; Fort 
Ancient on the Little Miami stands as a citadel in the rear of the 
center of this line. A mound at Norwood, back of Cincinnati, 
commands a view through a depression of the hills at Redbank 
eastwardly to a mound in the valley of the Little Miami; north- 
wardly through the valley of the Millcreek and the depression in 
the land thence to Hamilton, with the works at Hamilton; and 
by a series of mounds (two of which in Cincinnati and its sub- 
urbs have been removed) westwardly to the Fort at the mouth of 
the Great Miami. So a series of signal mounds along the Scioto 
from the northern boundary of Franklin county to the Ohio river, 
a distance of over one hundred miles, could transmit by signals 
an alarm from the little work north of Worthington through the 
entire length of the valley to the works at Portsmouth." 

Less extensive systems of stations in this wireless 
telegraphy have been clearly established in other sec- 
tions of the state, snch, for example, the one men- 
tioned in connection with the Glenford Fort. One of 
the prominent hills in Indiana which was within sig- 
naling range of Miami Fort, was crowned with 
a prehistoric fortification, thus establishing interstate 
(?) communications. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 61 



BUTLER COUNTY FORT. 

In prehistoric times, no less than later in the pio- 
neer days, the Great Miami must have been a great 
water way, for along its valley plains were numerous 
sites where chvelt the Mound Builders, while many 




View of Big Miami Valley from Fortified Hill — Butler County. 



of the hill-tops, on either side, were capped with 
walled enclosures or various shaped single mounds 
of these ingenious and mysterious people. After 
entering the river on his northern voyage to Picka- 
willany and the portage from that river to the St. 
Marys, Celoron passed beneath the war-like embattle- 



62 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

merits of many an earthen fortification. These dirt- 
built "strongholds" defended the hill surninits, no 
less securely than the stone turrets guarded, like grim 
sentinels, the rocky cliffs of the romantic Ehine. 
Doubtless these simple, crude bulwarks of clay on the 
heights of the Big Miami were in place before the 




View of Valley from Fortified Hill — Butler County. 



German Barons erected their towered castles. After 
paddling past four or five of these ancient fortresses, 
deserted and tenantless then as now, the plucky sail- 
ors of the little French fleet might have sighted the 
shadows of a peculiarly protected muniment which 
we call the Butler County Fort, because located in 
that county, three miles below the present town of 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 63 

Hamilton, and some thirty miles from the mouth of 
the Great Miami. The valley at the point in question 
is imposing in width. The hill, the summit of which 
the fort occupies, is on the west side of the river, per- 
haps half a mile distant from its present channel, and 
rises to an elevation of two hundred and fifty feet, a 
height considerably above any other in the vicinity. 
The section of the state now comprised in the county 
named was thickly strewn with the works of these 
ancient people, several hundred of their mounds and 
enclosures being in existence when the early trav- 
elers first had their attention called to them. 

This fort had a special significance, both in its 
well chosen location and the peculiar features of its 
design. It was accurately described by Mr. Squier 
in a concise pamphlet, published in New York in 
1847. He made a careful survey of the works, the 
plat of which was afterwards used in the extensive 
volume of Squier and Davis. 

This fort hill, like nearly all of the heights simi- 
larly protected, is the termination of an upland range 
that extends out like a long tongue into the valley. 
It is surrounded at all points, except the narrow neck 
towards the north, by deep ravines, presenting steep 
and almost inaccessible declivities. The slope to- 
wards the north is very gradual and from that direc- 
tion the hill crown is easy of approach. Skirting the 
brow of the hill and generally conforming to its rim, 
was the artificial wall of earth and stone, having an 
average heighth of five feet with a base of thirty-five. 



64 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



Those were the dimensions as the parapet stood when 
viewed by Mr. Squier. The earth composing the wall 
was a stiff clay having for the most part been taken 
up from the hill surface, Avithout leaving any percep- 
tible excavation. The length of the wall embankments 
was about three-quarters of a mile not counting the 




Largest Portion of Wall on Fortified Hill, Three Miles south of 
Hamilton, Butler County. 



gateway defenses, and the area enclosed was some 
seventeen acres. The hill summit, thus enwalled, rises 
gently on all sides from the rim towards the center, 
forming a knoll or camel-hump which at its greatest 
altitude is some twenty-five feet above the encircling 
walls. From this apex one may overlook not only the 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



65 



fort side but the entire surrounding country, present- 
ing the Great Miami valley on the east and the Valley 
or Indian Creek on the west. This scene is an encore 
of the miniature mountainous ones we have beheld 
from the previously described fortified hills. We are 
obliged to rely mainly upon the earlier report of Mr. 
Squier for the detailed accounts of this interesting 
fort, for it is now sadly ruined, indeed for the most 
part practically obliterated, for these defenses, which 
in their prime were impervious to the attacks of a 
savage foe, armed with flint pointed spears and stone 
battle axes, have fallen an easy prey to the invincible 
steel of the plow share. On our visit we found the 
fading lines of the earthen walls overgrown with, 
forest trees and almost obscured by impenetrable 
underbrush and tangiewood. Faint outlines remain 
of the famous north gateway and its crescent out- 
post. For it was the complicated protection to the 
four gateways or openings, three at the southern ex- 
tremity and one at the north, facing the land neck, 
that peculiarly classifies this fortification. The ac- 
companying diagram will best designate their posi- 
tion and form. Interior to the openings were "cov- 
ering" walls of a "most singular and intricate de- 
scription," a series of overlapping labyrinthian 
breastworks, so fashioned that the entering enemy 
would become entrapped between them. This scheme 
at the north gate is especially elaborate, while ex- 
terior to the gateway was a massive crescent-shaped 
mound extending across the land neck, convexing to- 
5 ' 



66 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

wards the plateau that afforded the approach to the 
fort. This gateway plan is in almost exact cor- 
respondence to the so-called Tlascalan gateways, em- 




Butler (County) Fort — Three Miles below Hamilton. 



ployed in the stone wall defenses of the province of 
Tlascala, Mexico, and described by Cortez and other 
early Spanish writers. This form of gateway, with 
variations, is found in other works of the Mississippi 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 67 

and Ohio valley Mound Builders and leads to the 
inference that there was some ethnical relationship 
between the Ohio Mound Builders and the ancient 
Aztecs and Toltecs. Interior to the northern wall 




Interior of Fort, Butler County, Three Miles South of Hamilton, 
Author Standing in Remains of One of the Dug-holes." 



there is still evidence of a ditch, while at various 
points within the enclosure there were "dug-holes," 
from which it appeared a portion of the material 



f 



68 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

was obtained for the walls. Some of these pits are 
jet clearly definable, indeed still "hold water," being 
donbtless originally nsed as reservoirs. 

Three or four hundred feet north of the fort on 
the level isthmus are the remains of a conical mound, 
thirty feet in diameter and now some ten feet high, 
surmounted by several trees of venerable and stately 
growth. It is recorded that years ago, the mound 
was partially excavated, the only result being the 
discovery of a quantity of stone which had been sub- 
jected to the action of fire. 

As our party approached the mound we were 
greeted by a couple of bareheaded, barefooted country 
boys who with youthful curiosity and energy had dug 
into the base of the tumulus and exhumed a skeleton, 
the bones of which lay heaped before the uncovered 
grave. The skull upon exposure had parted into frag- 
ments, the teeth falling into the cranium cavity. It 
was a comico-serio incident, the grewsomeness of it 
being no little enhanced by the moisture-sodden at- 
mosphere that hung like a clammy cloak about us 
beneath the heavy threatening sunless clouds. The 
settings of the scene were cheerless, but the boys glee- 
fully poked with their muddy feet the disinterred 
human relics, clay-stained and decay-eaten; 

"In nature's happiest mould however cast, 
To this complexion thou must come at last." 

"For even Imperious Csesar dead and turned to clay, 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away." 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders, 69 

Had this disjointed frame been that of a great war 
chief, "the hero of a hundred battles/' or perchance 
a "silver-tongued orator" rousing with his eloquence 
his fellows to deeds of valor, in whose honor his sur- 




Mound North of Butler Fort. 

viving tribesmen had erected this earthen monument? 
There could be no answer to our guesses, but there 
came to our mind, as we gazed upon the bones de- 
nuded of their earthy covering, the poem of Bryant 
on the "Disinterred Warrior. :" 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



Gather him to his grave again, 

And solemnly and softly lay, 
Beneath the verdure of the plain, 

The warrior's scattered bones away. 
Pay the deep reverence, taught of old, 

The homage of man's heart to death; 
Nor dare to trifle with the mould 

Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath. 

The soul hath quickened every part — 

That remnant of a martial brow, 
Those ribs that held the mighty heart, 

That strong arm — ■ strong no longer now. 
Spare them, each mouldering relic spare, 

Of God's own image; let them rest, 
Till not a trace shall speak of where 

The awful likeness was impressed. 

For he was fresher from the hand 

That formed of earth the human face, 
And to the elements did stand 

In nearer kindred than our race. 
In many a flood to madness tossed, 

In many a storm has been his path ; 
He hid him not from heat or frost, 

But met them, and defied their wrath. 

Then they were kind — the forests here, 

Rivers, and stiller waters, paid 
A tribute to the net and spear 

Of the red ruler of the shade. 
Fruits on the woodland branches lay, 

Roots in the shaded soil below; 
The stars looked forth to teach his way; 

The still earth warned him of the foe. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



A noble race ! but they are gone, 

With their old forests wide and deep, 
And we have built our homes upon 

Fields where their generations sleep. 
Their fountains slake our thirst at noon, 

Upon their fields our harvest waves, 
Our lovers woo beneath their moon — 

Then let us spare, at least, their graves 




ample of skeleton found in Ohio Mounds. This grave opened 
in Baum Village Site. 



FORT ANCIENT. 



The chief masterpiece of the Mound Builders is 
known as Fort Ancient. For imposing grandeur in 
size, ingenuity in design and perfection in construc- 
tion it is easily the 
first among the pre- 
historic fortifications 
and is regarded as 
representing the high- 
est point attained in 
earthwork structures 
by this lost race. 
When one has visited 
St. Peter's Cathedral 
he has witnessed the 
sum total of eccles- 
iastical architecture 
and when one has 

Entrance to Fort from West, -. . , , . ^ 

Looking East. St °° d Wlthm Fort 

Ancient he has seen 
the most majestic monument erected by the people 
who were its constructors. All honor to the 
State of Ohio, its possessor, and the Ohio State 
Archaeological and Historical Society, its custodian, 
that this priceless and unique work is today in excel- 
lent state of restoration and preservation. An ac* 

(72) 




Masterpieces of -the Mound Builders. 73 

count of this. work,, accompanied by a correct plan, 
.which we herewith reproduce, appeared in the "Port 
Folio/' a magazine published in Philadelphia for 
the year 1809. The author of this initial treatise 
on the subject, with modesty conspicuously rare in 
early researchers, omitted his name. The plan and 
description were copied by Mr. Atwater in his 
report to the American Antiquarian Society (1820) 
and republished in his "Western Antiquities," printed 
in Columbus (Ohio), 1833. It was also briefly de- 
scribed by Dr. Daniel Drake, in a chapter on an- 
tiquities in his "Pictures of Cincinnati/' pub- 
lished in 1815. The fort was also carefully studied 
and mapped "from a faithful survey" by Prof. 
John Locke of Cincinnati, the map and descrip- 
tion being published by him in 1843 in the papers 
of the American Association of Geologists and 
Naturalists. This map, which we also herewith re- 
produce, and Locke's description were incorporated 
in the work on the "Ancient Monuments of the Mis- 
sissippi Valley," by Squier and Davis, published by 
the United States government as the first volume of 
The Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,, 
printed in 1848. Squier and Davis supplemented 
Locke's description with one of their own. These 
diagrams and descriptions were the substantial bases 
for subsequent students and surveyors. Judge L. M. 
Hosea, of Cincinnati, made a personal study of the 
works in 1874, giving his conclusions in a scholarly 
article published in the "Cincinnati Quarterly Jour- 



74 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

nal of Science" for October of that year. The learned 
editor of the American Antiquarian (Chicago), Dr. 
Stephen D. Peet, has written many articles upon 
this inexhaustible theme. The most distinguished 
archaeologists of the country have made it a study. 
Professors J. W. Powell, Cyrus Thomas, Frederick 
W. Putnam, W. H. Holmes, G. Frederick Wright, 
John T. Short, M. C. Kead, Gerard Fowke, Gen- 
eral M. F. Force, Colonel Charles Whittlesey, Mr. 
Henry A. Shepherd and many others of equal or less 
distinction have contributed by their studies and 
writings to the literature concerning this famous 
chef d'aeuvre of the ancients. Models of it have been 
made for many of the museums of Europe and famous 
savants from all parts of the world have journeyed to 
America to verify the accounts sent broadcast con- 
cerning it. The proverbial Britisher who failed to find 
anything worthy of notice in this new country — be- 
cause it was so "deucedly devoid of ruins, dontcher 
know/' should have had his attention called to Fort 
Ancient. His longing for antiquity would have been 
supplied. He should have asked for what he did not 
see. It would have been forthcoming. 

In August, 1898, the annual convention of the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science 
was held in Columbus. On the last day of the session 
a special train, under the auspices of the Ohio State 
Archaeological and Historical Society, carried the 
delegates of the Archaeological and Ethnological Sec- 
tion of the Association to Fort Ancient. A luncheon 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



75 




Plan of Fort Ancient Published with an Explanation in the Port- 
folio (Philadelphia) for June, 1809. First Illustration of Fort 
Ancient Ever Made. Reproduced from the Original. 



76 21 aster pieces of the Ji o unci Builders. 



was served to oyer a hundred guests gathered about 
the table spread within the great gateway of the Old 
Fort. After dinner speeches were made by several 
of the most distinguished archaeologists of the coun- 
try. All paid high tribute to the wonderful works of 
a vanished race and to the enterprise of the Ohio 
Society for securing and preserving this greatest of 
all their monuments. In the fall of 1902 the Inter- 
national Congress of Americanists, the leading stu- 
dents of archaeology, from all parts of the world, met 
in Xew York City. They desired to see Cahokia Mound 
and Fort Ancient; on their way to the former they 
spent a clay at the latter, the guest of The Ohio State 
Archaeological and Historical Society. There were 
in the party the official national representatives of 
the Archaeological Departments of Canada, Mexico, 
Argentine Republic, Costa Rica, Uruguay, France, 
Germany, England, Sweden and Russia. The visit- 
ors were greatly delighted and astonished in their 
examination of the extensive fortifications of the 
people of a lost empire. Even the youthful and prac- 
tical United States could produce prehistoric remains 
of surpassing magnitude and symmetrical propor- 
tions, outdoing similar exhibits in the older countries. 
They all acknowledged it was the most wonderful 
specimen of its kind, probably in the world. 

The latest and most detailed investigation of the 
fort was made by Professor Warren K. Moore- 
head, who first visited it in 1885 and whose subse- 
quent explorations covered in the aggregate more 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



77 



than forty- three weeks, scattered through the years 
1888, 1889, 1890 and 1891. The results of his re- 
searches are incorporated in his two interesting 
works entitled, respectively, "Fort Ancient" and 
"Primitive Man in Ohio." He was assisted in the 
work by Mr. Gerard Fowke, author of the Archae- 
ological History of Ohio, published by the Ohio State 
Archaeological and Historical Society, and Mr. Clin- 
ton Cowen, official surveyor for Hamilton county. 
The two latter gentlemen made a careful survey of 
the works and drew the map which is now the ac- 
cepted authoritative outline of the fortification. 

LOCATION OF THE FORT. 

The site selected by its builders for this great- 
est fortress, grandest temple or largest walled city, 
which ever it may have been, was most advanta- 
geously chosen, on a slightly rolling plateau, overlook- 
ing the valley of the Little Miami River, in central 
Warren county, some forty miles northeast of the 
mouth of that river, where it enters the Ohio at Cin- 
cinnati. The river at the point in question, coming 
from the north, flows through a most picturesque val- 
ley perhaps a mile in width and flanked on each side 
by elevated uplands. On the east side a section 
of the elevation is nearly separated from the adjoin- 
ing plateau by two deep ravines, beginning within a 
few hundred feet of each other, the one, starting north 
and then running west, enters the Miami valley, the 
other starting south curves to the west, debauching 



78 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



into the same valley. The plat, accompanying this 
description and made especially for this publication, 
shows these ravines and their creeks. This plateau is 
about three hundred feet above the river level. The 
banks of these ravines form steep sides on the east 




Entrance to Fort from the West. 



and on the north of the peninsula which they cut off ; 
the only approachable way to the peninsula being the 
neck or strip of level plateau between the heads or 
sources of the two ravines. The west or Miami side of 
the hill is for the most part abrupt and difficult of 
ascent. The ravines on the east, north and south 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 79 

of the hill are exceedingly irregular in outline, 
creating sharp curves, jagged points and irregular 
indentations in the hillside, at one point, near 
the center of the hill, these ravines almost unite, 
leaving a narrow neck only about five hundred 
feet wide. Here the declivity on each side is very 
steep. Around this peninsula, on the very verge of 
the skirting ravines, was built the wall of defense; 
meandering around the spurs, recoiling to pass the 
heads of the gullies, it is so zigzag in its course 
that its entire length is 18,712 feet or more than 
three and one-half miles, while the direct line from 
the north wall to the south wall is only 5,000 feet 
or less than one mile. Something over one hun- 
dred acres, Moorehead says one hundred and twenty- 
six, are enclosed within the walls. This enclos- 
ure is divided by the contour of the embankments 
into what are known as the North or New Fort, the 
Middle Fort and the South or Old Fort. The terms 
"new" and "old" were suggested by the idea that the 
south fort would naturally be the first one to be con- 
structed as it, utilized alone, would be more secure 
and inaccessible than the new — which latter was 
"later" taken in to protect the entire hilltop. This 
supposition, like much that is put forth concerning 
the fort, is however a fanciful guess. 

The traveler alights from the train at "Fort An- 
cient Station," a collection of hotel, store, postoffice 
and three or four houses, by no means the "loveliest 
village of the plain," yet so lapsed into "innocuous 



80 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



desuetude'' that compared to it, Goldsmith's famous 
"deserted village" was a sceue of exciting activity. 
In the seasons of the year when the trees and hill- 
sides are stripped of their foliage, from the station 
one can plainly see the walls which cap the hilltop. 
A circuituous and strenuous climb of nearly a mile 
up the Lebanon and Chillicothe Pike brings one to 
the main entrance, marked "A" in our outline dia- 
gram. The impression is at once created that one 
is entering an imposing structure of some kind ; these 
gateway walls on either side are massive in base and 
height, rising with hump back summits above the 
continuing walls which they terminate. This gate- 
way has probably been widened by the pike. As one 
passes through, a view is obtained of a long stretch 
of lofty and shapely walls on the east side of the 
New Fort. This sight is at once reassuring — the 
visitor is now certain there is to be no disappoint- 
ment about this "famous fort;" it is not the fiction 
of imagination, you are really going to see all and 
more than you expected; your interest and wonder 
are at once aroused, Fort Ancient, whatever its origin 
or purpose, it itself no myth. 

The wall deserves careful study. It is a marvel- 
ous piece of defensive construction. Its width, 
height and contents vary as the requirements of the 
hill top and the proposed formidableness of the de- 
fense demands. The base breadth is from thirty to 
fifty feet, in some places as much as seventy, the 
height from ten to twenty-two feet, measuring from 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 81 




82 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



the level of the fort interior. The wall's surface has 
an outward slope from thirty-five to forty-three de- 
grees. This wall height is much increased at places 
on the interior by a moat or ditch from which the 
material was taken to build the barricade. This 
moat at places was found to be originally from two to 
seven feet deep, but has at all points been greatly 




Entrance to Fort from Inside Looking West. 

filled in by the natural slow deposit of decayed ac- 
cumulation, leaves, wood, vegetable matter, soil, etc. 
At some sections of the wall, particularly in the new 
fort, where the wall on the east faces the open 
plateau a moat Avas built exterior to the wall. Wheth- 
er these inside '•moats" were built as such or were 
merely the incidental depressions created by the re- 
moval of the earth for the wall is a disputed point. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 83 

It has been suggested that these moats, or some of 
them, where especially wide and deep, may have been 
utilized as reservoirs or artificial ponds in Avhich to 
store water. The soil from which the embankment 
is built is a tough, diluvial clay or loam. This con- 
sistency of the material has been an important factor 
in the preservation of these walls. 

At the risk of tedium and monotony, let us cir- 
cumambulate these walls. It is a journey as enter- 
taining as it is exhilarating, occupying three or four 
hours — the only means of obtaining a true apprecia- 
tion of the extent and ingenuity of this unequaled 
enclosure. The walking for the most part is good; 
the wall top is everywhere so spacious and level that 
were it not for the innumerable trees that pre-empt 
the way and the breaks made by the gateways and 
gullies, one could drive a "coach and four" along the 
summit. 

THE NORTH WALL. 

We climb the wall on the left, the western point 
of the north wall of the New Fort. This wall extends 
almost due east and west for a distance of nearly 
half a mile. It follows along the summit edge of a 
deep ravine which at its western outlet almost de- 
serves the title of valley. The base of this ravine is 
the bed of a little stream designated as Randall's 
Run. The south side of this ravine which the walls 
face is very steep, the ascent being quite impossible. 
This wall, strong and well preserved, varies in height 
and width and is broken by some nine or ten open- 



84 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



ings, natural or artificial. In several places gullies, 
which cut into the steep sides of the ravine, extend 
up to and through the fort walls. These natural open- 
ings, the gullies or cuts made by the outflow of water 
from within the fort and those made by the gradual 
approach or ascent of the gullies from the valley 
ravines below can be accounted for. The artificial 
openings or gateways, over seventy in number in the 
entire fort, are not so easily explained as the number 
of them is far in excess of the apparent necessity for 
purposes of egress and ingress and moreover they are 
frequently at places where the ascent or descent of 
the hillside is now practically impossible. We will 
discuss these gully openings and gateway passages 
later on. The north wall from "A" to "B" is especial- 
ly well formed; through this three gullies have cut 
their course, the most westerly one in a particularly 
distinctive way. Below the wall from "B" to "C," 
some thirty feet down the declivity, the steep hill- 
side is checked and presents a "terrace" or level land- 
ing, perhaps a thousand feet long and one hundred 
broad. These hillside terraces occur at many other 
places in the hillsides leading up to the fort. They 
are the subject of much discussion, the query being 
whether they are natural or were made by the Mound 
Builders. Our answer would be probably in most 
instances "natural," possibly in rare instances arti- 
ficial, not unlikely they might in some places be both 
at the same time, the original formation being em- 
ployed to complete a "platform." These terraces in 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 85 

many places were used as burying grounds as we 
shall see ; to what other use they may have been put is 
a matter of conjecture. This terrace, we first see, has 
every appearance of being simply a natural shelf in 
the hill. Fort Ancient is so extraordinary itself that 




Entrance — Fort Ancient Park, North Fort. 



it creates the tendency on the part of many students 
and spectators to give an unusual interpretation to 
every accessory feature. This tendency has led to 
many most fantastic conclusions and grotesque state- 
ments. About opposite the center of this north wall, 
and curving into the present roadway, is a crescent- 



86 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

shaped mound, originally two hundred and seventy 
feet in length, its convex side facing the wall. It is 
now but few feet high, having been badly defaced. 
Returning to the wall, it is noticed that at points, par- 
ticularly from "0" to "D," it has been carried below 
the summit level, the fort interior rising above it. This 
occurs at only a few other places in the construction 
of the fort. Within the north wall, especially along 
the eastern end, is a moat, or ditch, formed by the 




Section of East Wall, North Fort. 



removal of the soil for the wall. In this moat much 
water now stands, indeed has been of so long stand- 
ing that a willow tree has risen from its flag and 
rush-filled pool to add its weeping presence to the 
great variety of other trees that stand like rows of 
sentinels on the fort walls ; a long file of stately sol- 
diers they make; beech, ash, hickory, elm, walnut, 
cherry, poplar, sugar, oak, gum, buckeye, occasion- 
ally a silvery sycamore, stand guard along the para- 
pets which they well nigh have made immovable and 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 87 



imperishable, their tough embracing roots, like bands 
of iron and hoops of steel, grasping the earth erec- 
tions and holding them firmly in place. The north 
wall at its east end where it turns toward the south 
is carried to an unusual height, for here the gorge 
has tapered to a narrow wedge; the wall leaves the 
steep ravine side and the level plateau begins, afford- 
ing a point the enemy might well select for a stealthy 
assault from the ravine head. At "D" is the gate- 
way, at the northeast corner of the enclosure. 

PARALLEL WALLS AND PAVEHENT. 

Before continuing our walk we go outside a few 
hundred feet east on the pike to see the two mounds, 
one on each side of the road from which began the 
Parallel Walls. These mounds originally ten feet 
high and forty feet in diameter are some sixty feet 
apart. On being opened they were found to contain 
nothing but some charcoal flakes and a few pieces of 
broken pottery. From each mound extending east 
there was built a low earthen roadway elevation, a 
foot or more in height, twelve feet wide, and a little 
more than one-quarter of a mile in length. At the east- 
ern end these elevations came together in a circular 
curve, within the center of which curve was a little 
mound. These earthen parallel lines are now entirely 
obliterated but were clearly traced by earlier investi- 
gators and were defined and described by Prof. 
Moorehead. What they were for "nobody knows." 
A reasonable presumption would be that they were 



88 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



in some way connected with the games, possibly cere- 
monies of the builders. Similar structures have 
been found in other places in Ohio. They have been 
more often than otherwise dubbed "race courses. " 
It may have been a gauntlet ground. Between these 
parallel walls, extending from the west end, for more 



dies in width and two and a half inches in thickness. 
Its width was the space between the parallel walls, 
averaging sevent^y-five feet ; its length appears not to 
have been definitely determined, the statements, by 
different authorities, concerning the same, varying 
from one hundred to five hundred feet. It lay, of 
course, beneath the present pike. In places the stones 




Entrance to Fort from East, Looking 
West. On Each Side of this 
Road Ran the Parallel Walls. 



than two hundred 
feet was unearthed a 
"stone pavement." It 
was first discovered, 
about 1868, by Mr. 
George Ridge who re- 
sided on the north 
side of the pike a 
short distance east of 
the north mound. 
This "pavement" lay 
from one to three feet 
under the present soil 
surface, and was built 
of limestone slabs, 
averaging about a 
foot in length, six in- 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



89 




Fort Ancient. Plan by Caleb Atwater in American Antiquarian 
Society Proceedings, 1820. 



90 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



showed evidences of having been subjected to great 
heat and all were somewhat worn on the upper side 
or surface, not by "the inaudible and noiseless foot 
of time/ 7 but, so the discoverers claim, by the feet 
that trod incessantly to and fro or by those that 
"tripped the light fantastic/' as more than one writer 
thinks this was a place of amusement, a sort of as- 
sembly hall for aboriginal gaiety. Perhaps the first 
published notice of this "pavement" occurs in The 
Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science for July 
1874. That number gives an account of a visit to 
Fort Ancient by The Cincinnati Society of Natural 
History, the party consisting of some fifty gentlemen, 
scientifically and archseologically inclined. In the 
report of that excursion occurs the following: 

"It is said that a pavement of thin limestone has been discov- 
ered a foot or more below the surface of the ground, and extending 
several hundred yards in a southeast direction from these mounds, 
and I saw in the field nearby many of these fiat stones that had been 
plowed up, and upon digging a foot or more in depth at this place 
found the pavement, and lifted up some of the thin, badly weather- 
worn stone, which had evidently been placed where found, because 
the diluvial soil and drift was several feet thick below them. The 
excavation and work at this place was under the direction of Mr. 
Hosea and J. Kelly O'Neil, who were fully satisfied that they were 
lifting up the pavement laid by the subjects of the king of the 
Mound Builders anywhere from ten to five hundred thousand 
years ago, as it best suits the imagination, always being willing 
to rise or fall a peg or two to suit the taste of the inquisitor." 

Judge L. M. Hosea in a subsequent number of 
the Journal of Science (1874) gives at length a most 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 91 



interesting and scholarly description of the Fort. In 
relating his investigations of the pavement he in- 
dulges in a pleasing fancy over the scene suggested by 
the stone floor and its accompanying parallel walls. 



"Imagination was not slow to conjecture up the scene which 
was once doubtless familiar to the dwellers at Fort Ancient. A 
train of worshipers, led by priests clad in their sacred robes, and 




Roadway Approaching Entrance to Middle Fort. 



bearing aloft the holy utensils, pass in the early morning, ere yet 
the mists have risen in the valley below, along the gently swelling 
ridge on which the ancient roadway lies. They near the mound, 
and a solemn stillness succeeds their chanting songs ; the priests 
ascend the hill of sacrifice and prepare the sacred fire. Now the 
first beams of the rising sun shoot up athwart the ruddy sky, gild- 
ing the topmost bough of the trees. The holy flame is kindled, a 
curling wreath of smoke arises to greet the coming god ; the trem- 
ulous hush which was upon all nature breaks into vocal joy, and 



92 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



songs of gladness burst from the throats of the waiting multitude 
as the glorious luminary arises in majesty and beams upon his ador- 
ing people. A promise of renewed life and harpiness. Vain prom- 
ise, since even his rays can not penetrate the utter darkness which 
for ages has settled over his people." 

Professor Moorehead thinks this stone platform 
was for the purpose of a dry floor, when the surround- 
ing ground might be wet and niuddy, upon which the 
natives could hold dances, while the mounds and 
parallel walls "would afford an excellent position for 
on-lookers and for squaws who would heat tom-toms 
and accompany the dance with their usual doleful 
singing." He adds: "We believe this is the only in- 
stance of ancient pavement proven beyond a doubt in 
the Mississippi Valley * - * the earth, which ac- 
cumulated over them i stones i would give them an age 
of several hundred years at least." He designates 
the date of their placement at Iron A. D.. but ac- 
knowledges this is ••conjectural." 

If this ••floor" really existed to the extent claimed, 
its purpose will doubtless have many more guesses 
coming. As certainly may this "arrangement" have 
been the scene of religious incantations, sacrificial 
rites, a "den of superstition." perhaps the burning- 
stake-field for the captives, the apostates, the trait- 
ors, and the condemned criminals. 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 93 



EAST WALL. 

But we turn from "this pleasant place of all fes- 
tivity/ 7 or "chamber of horrors/' whichever it may 
have been, to resume our discursion along the walls. 
The stretch of defense in four divisions from "D," the 
eastern gateway, to "E" is the most clear cut and 
"fortlike" perhaps in the enclosure. These walls 




East Wall (North) Fort Ancient from Field Outside 



defend the interior from the level field that like a 
great plain sweeps to the east toward Chillicothe. 
These walls loom up straight and shapely and cut 
the horizon like pyramids in the desert. The first 
three of these sections are separately, 85, 110 and 
159 feet in length, they are some seventy feet broad 
at the base and twenty-three feet high. They are 



94 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



among the noblest examples of Mound Builders' de- 
fensive battlements. It is outside these Avails that 
the wide and deep moat existed. Water stood there- 
in continuously until a very recent date. This ditch 
must have been an intentional moat to protect the 
walls which here defend the most exposed approach 
to the fort. The moat inside is shallow, at 
least now ; it must have been filled in by the work 




East Wall, North Fort. 



of time. The open gateways, ten feet or less across 
at the base, are perfectly preserved. Why the open- 
ings in the most vulnerable point of the fort? Much 
speculation has been indulged thereat, In many of 
the enclosures in the valleys or river bottoms, else- 
where in the state, these openings are protected by 
conical mounds immediately before and within the 
open space; in some fortifications this mound is 
convex or horseshoe shaped, as the stone one on 
Spruce Hill and most notably at Miami Fort. Not 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



95 



so at Fort Ancient. The artificial gateways gape 
wide open and give no hint of protective features. 
It has been surmised that originally these breaks 
were built across with palisades or stockades or 
that fence-like wooden shields were set back some 
distance before the passage space like a great screen 
before an open door. Many insist that even on the 
walls themselves a palisade fence was built. But the 
evidence of such in the way of decayed wood, post 
holes, etc., is wanting, not only at Port Ancient but 
in the mound structures elsewhere. The Mound 
Builders in their mounds and defenses seem to have 
adhered strictly to earth or stone material, except in 
their graves and burial chambers. Dr. Selclen S. Sco- 
ville, in an address (1892) before the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, suggests 
these gateways may have served as places where the 
besieged could make sallies and retreats, in order to 
decoy the enemy within the enclosure to be captured. 
For we know that almost all barbarous people regard 
the capture of their enemies as of more importance 
than killing them in battle. Mr. Thomas J. Brown, 
editor of the Miami Gazette and a devoted student of 
Fort Ancient, which he began to visit fifty years ago, 
has the following theory concerning the gateways : 

"In reading descriptions of Fort Ancient we notice constant 
allusion to its numerous 'gateways,' and these are generally coupled 
with expression of wonder that there should be so many. Now 
I have made these 'gateways' my special study during my whole 
acquaintance with it. I have walked the whole lengtL of the ram- 



96 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



parts and counted every footstep and every gap, and carefully 
noted the distance of these gaps apart, and long ago concluded 
that there are but about five bona-hde gateway's, the rest being 
intended rather for points of defense than for places of ingress 
and egress. The earthen ramparts would afford little protection 
to the defenders in case an assault were made upon them. The 
inside slopes are a? steep as the outside and afford no suitable 
standpoint, so the defenders' bodies would be protected and yet 
give him an opportunity to see over the rampart. If he stood upon 
the top he would be even a better target for the assailants than 
they would be for him. I consider it necessary to conclude that 
each of these gaps was occupied with a blockhouse reaching oru 
beyond the wall, forming a bastion from which defenders could 
enfilade the outside of the ramparts most effectually. The distance 
of these gaps apart is in no case toe great to serve this purpose, 
and if we consider it in this way, the whole outside of the walls 
could be defended with very little exposure on the part of the 
defenders. There was evidently one gateway where the public road 
now enters from each side, and one at the extreme farthest end of 
the 'old fort,' one near the middle of the north side, and one most 
likely on the west side opening from the peninsula, and one nearly 
opposite on the east side. The rest of these gaps were intended 
merely to give opportunity for introducing blockhouses at proper 
distances and in proper positions for defense, and may have been 
supplied with small wickets, easily closed and easily defended. 
Even the acknowledged gateways were probably built in the same 
general way, but with the portal idea unmistakable and prominent." 

From "E" to the incising gully "F" is a deep 
moat. The ravine of Cowen Creek here begins to 
carve down the hillside; the channel of this creek 
grows deeper and steeper as it plows its way south 
till, at the southeast corner of the fort-hill, it unites 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 97 



with Stony Hollow Creek, which latter flows from the 
northeast and empties into the Miami. These ravines, 
with their radiating gullies, make the hill summit 
exceedingly irregular and jagged. The walls follow 
the crest-line closely; in order to do so they make 
many a sharp turn and often a quick reversal. In- 
deed the wall is largely a row of horseshoes or convex 
curves between the intervening gullies. The moat 




Section of East Wall (South) Fort Ancient from Inside. 



interior to the eastern and southern walls of the 
New Fort, "F" to "I," is very marked. From the 
gully "F" to gully "H," there are several artificial 
openings in the wall and some of them at places 
where the ravine side is so precipitous that a gate- 
way would be superfluous, if not absolutely useless. 
Some of these "openings," however, offer peculiar 
construction. The moat, in these cases, stops at the 

7 



98 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



base of the opening or is filled in, leaving the interior 
surface continuous through the gateway, and in not a 
few instances, outside the walls before the opening, is 
built a little platform, a continuation of the level 
walk which passes through the opening. These walk- 
ways, through and beyond the gateways, are very 




Entrance to Middle Fort or Crescent Gateway Looking South. 

distinct in places. This exterior "platform" might 
be used as a lookout or sentinel stand, and especially 
would this landing be of advantage when located on 
the edge of an inaccessible declivity. These external 
platforms occur most frequently along the east wall 
of the fort, suggesting the idea that attack was most 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 99 

feared on that side, yet the west side of the fort which 
was more approachable, has fewer of these platform 
projections. 

GREAT GATEWAY. 

At "I" the hilltop narrows and the isthmus or 
neck begins. The neck at this point is not over two 




Great Gateway from the North. 



hundred feet wide and advances with varying breadth 
for a quarter of a mile, nowhere exceeding three hun- 
dred feet in width and terminating at the narrowest 
point less than one hundred feet across, at the en- 
trance of the Old Fort called the Great Gateway. The 
walls on either side of the isthmus are the lowest and 



100 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

least formidable of any section because the natural 
protection on each side of the isthmus is the greatest 
Near the center of this isthmus where it widens to 
two hundred and fifty feet the erecters of the fort 
built the Crescent Gateway; a sort of intermediate 
barricade. It consists of two curving mounds, side 
by side, each convexing toward the north and extend- 
ing to the walls on either side of the neck. This 
seems to mean that the enemy would be expected 
to first attack the New Fort and if successful then 
advance along the neck and assault the Old Fort. 
The Crescent duly manned would check if not defeat 
the enemy's progress. This Crescent Mound is en- 
tirely and adroitly in accord with the whole scheme 
of the fort defense. The space between the Crescent 
and Great Gateway is called the Middle Fort. On 
both sides of this section the hillsides are unusually 
steep and rugged, being cut by deep gorges, the walls 
are therefore lower than elsewhere and for a short 
distance entirely lacking; the perpendicularity of the 
hillside being sufficient protection against approach. 
The Great Gateway is flanked on both sides by walls 
that are strengthened and enlarged; heaps of stones 
being used in their erection. Indeed the walls which 
here curve in to make the narrow passage, allowing 
no more room than would permit a wagon to pass, 
look from either side more like separate mounds than 
sections of the continuing wall. The passage path 
between these mounds is elevated, so as to give an 
incline inside and out, thus adding to the facility 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 101 

with which ingress could be prevented. This citadel 
of the fort is the acme of the engineering plan ; it is 
literally the piece de resistence that awakens admira- 
tion for the military genius of the Mound Builders. 
Here science weakens before sentiment and poetry 




The Great Gateway from the North. 



gets the better of archaeology, for just inside the Old 
Fort on the west, as you emerge from the Great Gate- 
way, is a conical mound, ten feet high, Avith a base 
diameter of forty feet, near which were found heaps 
of stones, used both as coverings for graves and to 
strengthen the wall. Human bones in vast quanti- 



102 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



ties — "bushels of theni" — were found here a few in- 
ches below the surface soil. Was this the burial spot 
and was this mound the monument to heroes who, bat- 
tling bravely for the "pass/' like the three hundred 
of Grecian glory, sank never to rise again, 

The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, 
In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait. 

What bloody encounters here occurred, how this 
narrow passage was piled with the bodies of the dead 
and dying we can never know, for 

Here, where they died, their buried records lie, 
Silent they speak from out the shadowy past. 

OLD FORT. 

We are now inside the Old Fort. From the Great 
Gateway the two walls which constitute the Old Fort 
greatly diverge, one runs directly east, the other 
southwest. The wall on the left from the Great Gate- 
way, as you enter the South Fort, makes a lengthy 
curve toward the east, conforming to the hill contour 
("K" to "L"). This Avail carries a wide and deep 
interior moat; exterior to it, thirty or forty feet down 
the steep incline, is a terrace, narrow, shelving and 
long. This terrace is located in the wildest portion 
of Fort Ancient. The ravine here is deeper than 
ever, the side below the terrace nearly perpendicular ; 
on this terrace were innumerable burials, the graves 
being of the crudest sort, the interments very shal- 
low, and covered with plentiful supply of stones. It 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 103 



was surely a fitting spot for the undisturbed repose 
of the warrior. Under the very walls in whose de- 
fense they may have sacrificed their lives; on the 
brink of a wild, foreboding ravine, so indicative in 
its nature of their own savage lives, the babbling 
brook and soughing tree-branches sang the requiem 




Mound in Old Fort Just Inside Great Gateway. 



of the buried. Was ever a more secluded bivouac 
for the dead? But if curse was uttered against any 
who might move those bones, it phased not the archae- 
ologist, for as one walks along the wall that looks 
down upon this barbarian cemetery one may see the 
desecrated tenantless sepulchres and the scattered 
stones, the pitiless work of curious scientists. 



104 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



BetAveen the "L" and "M" angle is a gateway 
opening out upon a spur platform such as has been 
previously mentioned. The trench within the wall is 
most marked. From "N" to "O" the cliff is un- 
usually steep and the wall less defensive. At "O" 
is one of the most extensive spur tables in all the 
range of the walls. From this point in the absence 
of foliage the eye could folloAv the full length of 
the Old Fort east wall. The southeast corner of 
the Old Fort ("P") offers another spur commanding 
a most splendid view of the Stony Hollow ravine as 
it extends from its narrow source to its broad en- 
trance into the Miami valley, on the right. This is a 
scene of wildest tiny grandeur, if one may so speak, 
for the spectator stands far above the lofty tops of 
the trees which fill and pack the ravine and crowd 
up its straggling broken hillsides. It is a little black 
forest ; the interlocking branches of the elbow-touch- 
ing trees shut out the struggling sunbeams and the 
shadows cast their gloom over the open spaces of 

4 'The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep." 

It must have been such a compact, dense army of tree- 
tops that appeared to the frenzied imagination of 
Macbeth when told that "Birnam wood do move to 
Dunsinane." 

Betwixt the platform gateway at "Q" and the 
angle "K" the wall has a wide moat within, while 
beneath the wall outside is another terrace, not 
very distinctly formed, but serving as another 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 105 



cemetery, for here numerous graves were found. 
The gully marked "S," midway in the hillside and 
wall of the Old Fort, is exceedingly broad and cav- 
ernous, the breach in the earth works being a hun- 
dred and fifty feet or more in extent. The hill brow 
was originally carved out by a broad curve, as in- 




Section of South Wall, Old Fort. 



dicated by the wall following the edge, but the 
gully subsequently cut under and through the wall, 
making the ugly scission noted. We mention this 
as a sample "wash out" which the archaeologists 
and geologists utilize as an age indicator. The 
theory and claim is that in the cases where the 



106 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



gully or ravine has destroyed the wall and invaded 
the fort interior, the time which nature required to ex- 
tend the ravine to its present limits within the walls, 
measures the age of those walls. These geological 
timekeepers tell us some of these ravines were many 
hundreds of years in working themselves out, even 
five and six thousand years are among the figures 
mentioned in connection with this fort. 

But has nature always run her ravine trains ac- 
cording to unchangeable geologic time tables? With- 
out attempting the scientific diagnosis, this in 
substance is the method of notation, and it is given 
without comment for what it is worth. It is certainly 
more reasonable than some other methods of so-called 
scientific computation. 

In some instances the apex or head of the gully 
where it clipped the hilltop would be walled across, 
the wall instead of going around to avoid the 
cut and shut it out, would be depressed down the 
near side, across the bottom and up the other side 
without a break. This was doubtless the case in some 
instances where now the wall is gone, the gully sub- 
sequently carrying away the transversing embank- 
ment. Again in places, as may be seen, the gully was 
filled with the base of the wall, the summit level of 
the wall presenting no irregularity or depression. 

From "T" to "U" are three long stretches of strong 
walls. The entire length faces a terrace, too ill-de- 
fined and too natural appearing to claim artificiality, 
at least to the eye of the layman. Along this ledge 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 107 



were found burials and it is to be noted that these 
terrace graves are almost confined to the hillsides of 
the Old Fort, a few being discovered on the slight 
spurs beneath the west wall of the isthmus. Whether 
the existence of these burials in connection with the 
South Fort strengthens the claim of a greater age for 
it than for the North Fort, we do not assume to say. 

THE CEMETERY. 

In the center of the Old Fort was located the ceme- 
tery, the largest burying ground of the fort people. 
Within a radius of a hundred feet, in all directions, 
some three hundred graves were found and over a 
thousand wagon loads of stones were removed there- 
from by different excavators. Professor Moorehead 
found twenty skeletons. The graves were sunk an 
average depth of two and one-half feet, and were 
formed of limestones which were plentiful in the 
ravines and river bottom below. The stones were 
arranged around the sides, head and feet and over 
the remains of the interred bodies. We reproduce, 
by permission, an illustration from Mr. Moorehead's 
work, of one of these interments, the covering layer 
of stones, of course, being removed so as to expose the 
skeleton. Buried with it were a large spear-head of 
yellow flint, remains of broken pottery and a large 
stone celt, a chisel or axe. The skeletons were in vari- 
ous stages of decomposition and generally crumbled to 
dust on being exposed. The space between the en- 
circling stones and the body was usually filled in with 



108 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

earth. The graves in this cemetery were almost uni- 
form in construction. These skeletons showed little 
or no difference in size and form from the modern 
conventional skeleton. The "skulls were well shaped," 




Stone Grave and Skeleton as Found by Prof. 
Moorehead in the Cemetery of the Old Fort. 



and Professor Moorehead thinks, presented two types 
of mentality, a lower and a higher order. He further 
claims that the tree growths surmounting some of 
these graves indicated that the burials antedated the 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 109 

period when the Indians were known to have first 
immigrated into or occupied this portion of the coun- 
try; i. e., the post-Columbian historic tribes, such as 
the Delawares, Shawnees, etc. Mr. Warren Cowen 
for the past ten years the custodian of the Fort, 
states that he removed from the space including the 
cemetery the stump of a walnut tree which a dis- 
tinguished botanist estimated to be between four and 
five hundred years old. The conclusion however, 
that the fort antedates the Indian invasion is ques- 
tioned by some archaeologists and ethnologists. 
When doctors disagree, who shall decide? The reader 
pays his money — for this book — and takes his 
choice. There can be no absolute decision. 

The graves on the terraces were in the main simi- 
lar in construction and contents to those found in 
the interior of the cemetery. In many cases the 
stones were more plentifully employed. Some of the 
terrace graves contained a combined number of bur- 
ials; a sort of group tomb. One "tomb," located 
on the ledge west of the Old Fort and overlooking the 
Miami valley, which Prof. Moorehead mentions, con- 
tained in its makeup a quantity of stones equal to 
one hundred wagon loads; when found they were 
lying in a layer two feet thick and spread over a 
space twenty feet wide — the width of the terrace — 
and fifty feet long. It required the labor of three 
men for two days to displace the loose masonry of 
this crude mausoleum. Fragments of twenty skele- 
tons were exhumed from this plural grave. The 



110 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

skulls were crushed, the jaws broken, the body bones 
wasted and scattered, but such leg and arm pieces as 
were found entire testified by their size and shape 
that the deceased were people about the same stature 
as the present Americans, though "with greater 
strength and powers of endurance." If there were 
giants in those days, as some ethnologists would have 
us believe, they were not in evidence at Fort Ancient, 
so far as the "exhibits" prove. Many children were 
buried on the terraces. 

GRAND VIEW POINT. 

But we turn from these sepulchral features of the 
fort to "take a more cheerful view." This is ob- 
tained from the sharp angle of the wall at "U." We 
call it Grand View Point. A smart spur of the hill 
juts out over the valley depths. The spectator is 
on the highest eminence of the hill and looks north 
upon an amphitheatre; a circle of hills rise on all 
sides and enclose the valley and river of the Miami; 

"Rock, river, forest, mountain, all abound." 

Whether the Mound Builder was consciously or 
unconsciously touched with the spell of pleasing scen- 
ery, he invariably choose, in his upland habitations, 
locations that offered the most attractive display of 
natural beauty. This lookout sweeps a vista that 
one is loth to leave; the historic Little Miami here 
passes through the most picturesque setting of its 
entire course ; the forest clad hills gently slope to the 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. Ill 

grain clothed fields, through which the river grace- 
fully winds. Prom this vantage place, too, can be 
seen the full mile length of the western wall, crown- 
ing with its undulating height and deviating curv- 
ings the zigzag summit of the hill, the steep side of 
which is slashed with gullies and streaked with the 




Little Miami Valley Looking North from Grandview Point. 

gravel and alluvial deposits of a glacial period, for 
ages or eons ago, the geologists say, this peaceful 
and verdure adorned valley was a lake, upon which 
colossal cakes of ice floated and bumped against each 
other. Many of these ice floats were driven by the 
winds or shoved in the 'push" upon the hillsides and 



112 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



there dumped their loads of sand and debris. This 
western hillside was once well covered with the gla- 
cial floatage. The ravines came later, tearing away 
the gravel covering and digging into the clay and 
limestone of the hill. Thus there were great geolog- 
ical "goings on" in these parts before the Mound 
Builders came upon the scene of action. We could 
not qualify as an expert on this subject, but we offer 
the probability that the so-called "terraces" above 
mentioned were not hand-made by the Mound Build- 
ers but rather were the handiwork of the geological 
activities, long "before the war" of the Mound Build- 
ers. We are upheld in this position by the fact that 
similar platforms are found on the hill slopes of the 
opposite, western side, of the valley, where the Mound 
Builder left no evidences of his habitation or pres- 
ence. Professor Moorehead. however, insists that 
these terraces, or at least some of them, are artificial; 
that they were built by men and used as burial sites 
and vantage ground in war. He says "The claim 
that these were made by glacial action and have no 
work of man about them, cannot be substantiated. It 
is not possible that water could deposit so regular a 
line for so long a distance. Moreover, these terraces 
are not gravel : they are limestone clay ; and their 
formation could not result from glacial action," 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 113 



STONES IN WALL. 

But we resume our trudging along the wall top. 
We follow the "battlements/' swerving in and out, 
descending the end of each separate section, spring- 
ing across the opening, and up again on the opposite 



1 




West Wall, North Fort near Entrance to Middle Fort. 



side of the gateway, here and there coming abruptly 
face to face with a washout or gully; some of these 
we descend to clamber up the corresponding accliv- 
ity; occasionally a wall gap is "too fierce to tackle" 
and we go around and resume the wall at its continu- 
ation. This wall, by the way, is composed almost en- 
tirely of the soil from the fort interior, as before 
8* 



114 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



stated. Stones however are used, often at the gateway 
ends, to better secure their retention of form; again 
where the wall is unusually large or the descent on 
the outside especially precipitous, stones are used as 
"steadiers" or strength and form retainers. Portions 
of the west wall on the isthmus are said to be com- 
posed almost entirely of stone. In two or three 



Ravine Back of Custodian's House, horizontal sections 

with time interven- 
ing ; built half way up, covered with a layer of stones 
and then left till it was grown over with grass and 
small sprouts and covered with vegetable matter. 
Upon this beginning a subsequent layer of earth and 
stones was placed to complete the wall. But the for- 
tifications seem in the main to have been erected by 
one continuous labor. Stones were seldom used ex- 




places, for a short 
distance, stones were 
laid on the wall top 
as a sort of walk. In 
some places Profes- 
sor Moorehead found 
layers of stone 
through the center 
of the wall as re- 
vealed by the trans- 
verse cutting of the 
gully. At one point 
the wall seemed to 
have been built in two 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 115 

cept at the gateway ends and where the wall might 
need especial strengthening as the toughness of the 
soil composing the wall gave it sufficient self-sustain- 
ing trength and permanency. 

Passing north along the Avest wall of the isth- 
mus we re-enter the New Fort, the southern and 
western wall of which is badly broken by wide 




West Wall (North) Fort Ancient. 



and impassable gullies, the main one of which, like 
an immense crack in the hill, extends almost to the 
center of the Fort. The opening where the walls 
cease on either side is two hundred feet or more 
across. How much of this cavity was cut before the 
fort was reared, is hard to tell. This is one of the 
gullies the geologist might wrestle with in his time 
calculations. If it. antedated the ancient fortifiers, 



116 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



it would seem natural for them to have carried the 
wall along the sides of the gap to estop ingress from 
the gully. The wall-ends on each side appear arti- 
ficial, i. e., they appear to terminate as originally in- 
tended for they unquestionably continue down the 
gully side gradually tapering off till lost in the ravine 
bank; possibly there was little or no intervening 
break when the wall was built and that a whole sec- 
tion of the defense was gradually eaten away. We 
do not know. All other vulnerable points on the hill 
were so carefully and laboriously guarded, the appar- 
ent neglect of this break baffles explanation. Passing 
around this gully Ave soon terminate our cireumambu- 
lation of the walls ; we have completed the great cir- 
cuit ; we finish at the pike gateway, where we entered. 
It has been a strenuous tramp but the result is amply 
compensatory, for in no other way can one get an 
adequate idea of the extent and ingenuity of the 
fort, the natural advantage of the hill, and the scenic 
attractions its location presents. 

THEORIES CONCERNING THE FORT. 

We have seen and studied this vast monument of 
the Mound Builders, the greatest architectural pro- 
duct of their labor and genius now extant. What 
does it all mean? Its age and purpose have elicited 
every variety of conjecture. For we can only con- 
jecture. We cannot know. Taking into account the 
different evidences of its antiquity — geological, 
ethnological and archaeological — it is safe to say it 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 117 

was completed and abandoned at least five hundred 
years ago, or a century before Columbus discovered 
this continent. It most likely was in existence five 
hundred years before that, or a millenium before 
now. This would carry us back to the heart of the 
Dark Ages in European events; antedating the Nor- 
man Conquest of the Anglo-Saxons; to the time of 
Alfred the Great, before the conquering Canute or- 
dered back the waves of the sea ; before Macbeth mur- 
dered Duncan and before the Crusaders began their 
pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre. 

Who the people were to whom the builders of 
this fort undoubtedly belonged we will discuss later 
on. We say this "fort," because every reliable evi- 
dence and reasonable inference leads to that conclu- 
sion. In this nearly all the better and safer scholars 
agree. As sustaining the "fort theory" we quote 
from the article in Science (1886) by Prof. Cyrus 
Thomas, certainly one of the highest authorities on 
the prehistoric works in America, he says, speak- 
ing of Fort Ancient : 

"That it was built and intended as a work of defense, is so 
apparent that it is scarcely possible there should be conflicting 
opinions on this point. The situation chosen, and the character of 
the work, seem sufficient to put this conclusion beyond all doubt. 
Yet there are few, if any, satisfactory indications, aside from the 
character and extent of the work, that any portion of the inclosed 
areas was occupied for any considerable length of time as a village 
site. That a work of such magnitude and extent could have been 
hastily cast up for temporary protection, by a savage, or even a 
semi-civilized people, is incredible. Moreover, there are reasons for 



118 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 

believing that the whole fort was not built at one period of time, 
but was progressive. The southern part was apparently built first, 
the northern section being a subsequent addition, made possibly be- 
cause of increase in the population, most likely by the incoming 
parties or clans seeking protection." 

It would be entertaining to recite all the curious 
purposes attributed to this work. One thinks it was 
a great relief map of the continent of North and 
South America, the lines of the new and old forts 
making a striking resemblance to the outline of the 
Western Hemisphere. Another that the walls of the 
two forts resemble two great serpents turning and 
twisting in a deadly conflict — as the serpent was the 
chief symbol of those primitive people. Another re- 
garded it an immense trap to secure game. The hunt- 
ers would form lengthy lines the country around and 
drive the buffalo, deer and wild game into this corral, 
where the animals could be retained and killed at 
pleasure — a sort of commercial slaughter house or 
aboriginal meat trust ! Others concluded it was a 
vast holy temple, in which religious ceremonies of 
great and imposing nature were at times celebrated. 
Again it is merely a walled town, but mostly it 
has been designated, as before stated, a military 
fortress, the safe retreat and refuge for the popu- 
lation of the surrounding country. To our mind 
it is not improbable that it was the fortified capital 
of these people in the Ohio valley. May it not have 
been the national fortified seat of government, the 
federal headquarters of the confederated tribes? 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 119 

Certainly it was the center of a great Mound Builder 
population. The Miami valley in this neighborhood 
was alive with these people, as the various scientific 
explorations indubitably testify. At the base of the 
fort hill, on the broad bottom of the river, was a vil- 
lage site great in extent ; one mile and a half below 
the southern extremity of Fort Ancient Avas "another 
large village covering some eight or ten acres, rich 
in graves and debris. Two miles up the river is still 
a third, so large that it must have been occupied by 
two or three hundred lodges — while at the mouth 
of Caesar Creek, six miles to the north, are two ex- 
tensive sites, one in the bottom and the other upon 
the hill to the south." All these Avere carefully ex- 
plored under the direction of Professor F. W. Put- 
nam, of the Peabody Institute. These sites and others 
abound in the immediate vicinity of the Fort, while 
the whole southwestern part of the state is an area 
thickly covered with the remains of this extinct race, 
as a glance at the archaeological map by Professor 
Cyrus Thomas will reveal. 

FORT VILLAGE. 

That the fort itself was to a certain extent, at 
least, a walled city, is proven by the remains of 
a "village" explored by Professor Moorehead. This 
village was in the Old Fort and adjacent to 
the cemetery already described. The evidences were 
the "circles" of burned earth, ash heaps, pot- 
tery and animal fragments, bear, deer bones, char- 



120 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



coal, burnt stones, etc., marking the places where 
"wigwams" or lodges had been erected. In short the 
same discoveries that disclose village sites elsewhere. 
No metal implements of any kind were found, unless 



it be a few small pieces 




Skull of Woman Found by Prof. 
Moorehead in Stone Grave in 
the Village Site. 



of native beaten copper. 
These lodge circles were 
from 22 to 30 feet in 
diameter the soil of the 
area enclosed being of a 
different color from the 
earth outside. These 
lodge floors, when un- 
covered, were found 
several inches beneath 
the accumulating surface 
soil. In the moats and 
ditches buried beneath 
the later filling were 
found similar debris, 
suggesting that these 
habitations occasionally 
occupied the inner edge 
of the ditch and that 
it just as our house- 
from the kitchen into a 



"refuse was thrown into 
wives would throw rubbish 
lake, river or pond" adjacent to the house. Thou- 
sands of primitive implements used in war, the chase 
and domestic life, arrow and spearheads, axes, skin- 
ning stones, etc., were found in the fort precincts, 
indicating great active life therein. Outside the 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 121 

northeast gateway of the New Fort, a short distance 
away, on the farm of Mr. Ridge were found in the 
area of about an acre vast quantities of flint clip- 
pings, consisting of countless pieces of unwraught 
flakes and innumerable fragments in various stages 
of workmanship, of arrow and spear heads, knives, 
awls, needles, etc. This field of flint must have been 
the storehouse or "factory" where implements used 
in peace and war were made. Professor Moorehead, 
in speaking of this flint field, calls attention to the 
fact that no flint in natural deposit is found in the 
vicinity of Fort Ancient. Hence all this raw mate- 
rial must have been brought from a distance. He 
notes that the varieties of the flint here found indi- 
cated that they Avere obtained from the quarries of 
Flint Ridge, Licking county (Ohio) and a flint quar- 
ry on the Ohio River in Indiana. In both the 
Old and New Forts were found several small 
conical or circular mounds, usually three or four feet 
high with a base diameter of some twenty feet. Noth- 
ing indicative or important was found in any of them. 
The New Fort presented no such indications of do- 
mestic life as did the Old. The latter has therefore 
been regarded as more exclusively used for military 
purposes, perhaps a Campus Martius where the war- 
riors were stationed and drilled. Judge Hosea 
thinks : 

"Any one examining these works must come to the con- 
clusion that they were erected for defense, and that by a race 
of men who understood something of the art of war; indeed, 



122 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



much more than can be reasonably attributed to the roving pro- 
pensities and unstable habits of the American Indian aborigines 
found upon the continent by the first discoverers of this country. 
The extent, too., of these workj, viewed in the light of military 
fortifications, proves beyond peradventure that they were raised 
not for the protection of a tribe more or less numerous, but of 
a powerful people, raised to war and used to war's alarms; for 
within these formidable lines there might be congregated, at a 
moment's notice, fifty or sixty thousand men, with all their 
materials of war, women, children, and household goods. The 
Roman legion, we are told, required only a square of seven hun- 
dred yards to effect the strongest encampment known to the 
ancients of Europe and Asia, so that, upon a similar basis, the 
investment of these fortifications must have been the work of a 
very formidable body of men indeed, and such as we read of 
only in the great wars of the Roman emperors with the bar- 
barous hordes that swept from the North, or the masses that 
were hurled upon each other in the days of the first crusades. The 
supposition that the works were of a military character, seems to 
me not only to be the most probable, but the only one, in the 
absence of any clue, history, or tradition, in the minds of the 
aborigines, that can be reached." 

Judge Force concludes that "Fort Ancient, which 
would have held a garrison of sixty thousand men, 
with their families and provisions, was one of a 
line of fortifications which extended across this state 
and served to check the incursions of the savages of 
the north in their descent on the Mound Builders' 
country. Certainly this structure was a tremendous 
accomplishment for a primitive people." 

Like all the other works of this early people Fort 
Ancient was unmistakably the product of builders 
who wrought only with the tools of a stone age. There 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 123 

were no steam shovels, no derrick scoops to lift the 
earth and dump it in position — it was "hand made." 
Not even horses, mules, oxen or wooden sledges facili- 
tated the labor. Though in justice to all authorities 
it should be noted that there is one unique theory in 
favor of animal aid. Dr. Frederick Larkin in his 
"Ancient Man in America" sedately introduces the 
suggestion that the mastodon, the bones of which are 
found in Ohio and elsewhere, contemporaneously with 
those of the Mound Builder, was a "favorite animal 
and used as a beast of burden" by them. Mr. Larkin 
then seriously declares it is not difficult for him to 
believe that those ancient people "tamed that monster 
of the forest and made him a Avilling slave to their 
superior intellectual power." Such being the case he 
adds: "We can imagine that tremendous teams have 
been driven to and fro in the vicinity of their great 
works, tearing up trees by the roots, or marching 
with their armies into the field of battle amidst show- 
ers of poisoned arrows." And why not? The ele- 
phants of Alexander and Hannibal did no less cen- 
turies before the Christian era. 

The late Dr. Edward Orton, president (1898) of 
the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science and one of the foremost scientists this coun- 
try has produced, in an address before the members 
of the Ohio State Legislature (March, 1898), upon 
Fort Ancient, said : 



124 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



"The first point that I make is that the builders of Fort An- 
cient selected this site for their work with a wide and accurate 
knowledge of this part of the country. 

"You all know of the picturesque location, in the beautiful and 
fertile valley of the Little Miami, on the table-land that bounds 
and in places almost overhangs the river, and which is from two 
hundred to two hundred and fifty feet above the river level. Avail- 
ing themselves of spurs of the old table-land which were almost 
entirely cut off by gorges tributary to the river, they ran their 
earth walls with infinite toil in a tortuous, crenulated line along 
the margins of the declivities. Where the latter were sharp and 
precipitous the earth walls were left lighter. Where it became 
necessary to cross the table-land, or where the slopes were grad- 
ual, the walls were made especially high and strong. The eye and 
brain of a military engineer, a Vauban of the olden time, is clearly 
seen in all this. We cannot be mistaken in regard to it when we 
thus find the weak places made strong, and the strong places left 
as far as possible to their own natural defenses. The openings 
from the fort, also, lead out in every case to points easily made 
defensible and that command views from several directions. 

"In the second place we cannot be mistaken in seeing in the 
work of Fort Ancient striking evidences of an organized society, 
of intelligent leadership, in a word, of strong government. A vast 
deal of labor was done here and it was done methodically, syste- 
matically and with continuity. Here again you must think of the 
conditions under which the work was accomplished. There were 
no beasts of burden to share the labors of their owners ; the work 
was all done by human muscles. Baskets full of earth, each con- 
taining from a peck to a half bushel, borne on the backs of men or 
women, slowly built up these walls, which are about four miles in 
length and which have a maximum height of not less than twenty 
feet. Reduced to more familiar measurements the earth used in 
the walls was about 172,000,000 cubic feet. 

"But not only were the Mound Builders without the aid of 
domestic animals of any sort, but they were also without the ser- 
vice of metals. They had no tools of iron ; all the picks, hoes and 



Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 125 



spades that they used were made from chipped flints, and mussel 
shells from the river must have done the duty of shovels and 
scrapers. In short, not only was the labor severe and vast, but it 
was all done in the hardest way. 

"Can we be wrong in further concluding that this work was 
done under a strong and efficient government? Men have always 
shown that they do not love hard work, and yet hard work was 
done persistenly here. Are there not evidences on the face of the 
facts that they were held to their tasks by some strong control?" 

He then facetiously suggested there might have 
been political "bosses" in those days to gather and 
control the "gang" that built the fort. This latter 
idea is inimitably suggested in a poem by Mr. Osman 
C. Hooper, who after visiting the fort, "threw off" 
the subjoined : 

Before Ohio knew a name, a thousand years ago, 

A great Cazique stood on the heights and watched Miami's flow ; 

Tall, straight, majestic as a god, he looked the valley o'er 

And heard the hurrying breeze repeat the water's sullen roar. 

About him Nature lay full-garbed in leaf and blade and flower, 

While he, the Boss, stood clothed upon with little else but power. 

Aloof his people stood and gazed — a trembling lot and meek — 
And wondered what was holding fast the thought of the Cazique ; 
Alert to execute his will, they waited his command 
And, eager, pressed about him, at the beck'ning of his hand. 
"What wouldst thou, master?" they inquired. "Our hands and feet 
are thine, 

Command, and thou shalt have it ere the sun again shall shine;" 

"What do I want? Look, slaves, and see the beauteous valley 
there. 

The bending sky, the teeming soil and all the hues they wear ; 



126 Masterpieces of the Mound Builders. 



Behold the stream that leaps and laughs and roars and then is still; 
Look on this bit of heaven dropped within this bowl of hill. 
Can ye behold nor guess the wish that in my mind has birth?" 
He paused, and loud the thousands cried, ''Our lord would have the 
earth." 

"E'en so!" the great Cazique replied. "You boast of what things 
you 

Can do before the morrow's sun drinks up the morning dew ; 

But I am lenient, O slaves, and give you just a year 

To get the earth and bring it in its wondrous beauty here." 

He ceased to speak and waved his hand to bid his people go ; 
And straight, ten thousand dusky forms, like arrow from a bow, 
Sped to the work, each with a bowl and shell for digging fit, 
And scratched the earth and took the soil and all that grew in it. 

Then, bowl by bowl, they bore the earth to where the monarch 
stood 

And piled it on the height where'er his eye considered good ; 
They dug and carried, night and day, from brown-leafed fall to fall, 
And thus they built upon the height a wondrous earthen wall 
Upon their work the monarch looked, then glanced the valley o'er 
And marvelled that the earth was there much as it was before. 
"Alas!" he cried, "they toil but fail; my wish can never be; 
But, if I cannot have the earth, then open, Earth, for me !" 

And thus he died, this early Boss of all that mighty clan ; 
His aim was high like every aim of the Ohio man ; 
He failed, but still did good and so quite justified the birth 
Of that desire within his breast to have and own the earth. 



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